ArchiveEngine Web Server
The ArchiveEngine has a built-in web server (HTTP server) for status and configuration information.- You can use any web browser (Netscape, Internet Explorer) to access this ArchiveEngine web server.
- You can do that on the computer where the ArchiveEngine is running as well as from other computers, be it a PC or Macintosh or ... as long as you are on the same network.
- You do not need a web server like the Apache web server for Unix or the Internet Information Server for Win32 to use this. The ArchiveEngine itself acts as a web server.
- You cannot view archived data with this mechanism. See the documentation on retrieval, especially the CGIExport tool for web access to archived data.
- You can not only use this mechanism interactively but also write your own HTTP client programs, elegantly based on the HTTP client libraries that come with perl or python, to explore this web interface.
Usage
You have to know the internet name of the machine that is running
the ArchiveEngine as well as the TCP port.
If you are on the same machine, use "localhost".
The port is configured when you start the ArchiveEngine, it defaults
to 4812. Then use any web browser and point it tohttp://<host where engine is running>:<port>e.g. http://localhost:4812
The start page of the ArchiveEngine web server should look similar to the one shown to the right.
From there on you can hopefully follow the links except for the following one:
Stop the ArchiveEngine
To avoid accidental stops of the ArchiveEngine, the link to the stop URL is hidden. You have to manually type the special URL.../stop, e.g.
http://localhost:4812/stop
into your web browser.In case your ArchiveEngine has been compiled with password protection enabled (has to be done at compile time), you will be prompted for a user-name and password. That name and password are also picked at compile time.
In Engine/Tools there is an example tcl script that stops the engine with a user name and password in case you want to stop the engine from within a script and not interactively.
Online Configuration
If not disabled using the -nocfg command line option,
this page allows you to add new groups and then add channels
to those groups.
If you want to change the configuration of a channel,
you can do so by adding it again with the new configuration.
Note: This only allows you to "upgrade" a channel to a smaller
scan period or the "Monitor" mode. You cannot remove channels.
Persistent configuration
When the configuration is changed via the Web interface (channels added etc.), the original configuration files are not changed.Instead, the engine tries to write a new set of configuration files in a "cfg" subdirectory. You will get cannot write to cfg directory messages if no such directory exists. You can either decide that you are not interested in keeping online changes to the configuration or create a cfg subdirectory. After a shutdown, a system like cvs or edit-and-compare can then be used to merge the online changes as reflected by configuration files in the cgf subdirectory into the original files. (better ideas welcome)
ChannelArchiver Manual