Geneos Upgrade Notes

Overview

This document provides information about the product changes that can affect upgrading from one version of Geneos to another.

To learn more about the supported Geneos versions and new features in the Geneos 6.x release, see the following documents:

• Geneos 6.x Release Notes
• Geneos 6.x Compatibility Matrix
• What’s New in Geneos

Note

End of life for 4.x.x is 31 May 2023. If you are using 4.x.x, we advise you to upgrade to 5.x.x or newer.

Upgrade to Geneos 6.3.x

Netprobe and Collection Agent using Helm charts

This version now supports running a Collection Agent image as a non-root user with privileged file access when either log collection or persistence, or both are enabled. To support this, the Collection Agent image tag is now determined during the installation of the Helm chart, and the agent image tag setting in the values file is left blank by default. Setting the agent image tag in the values file will force the Helm chart to use the specified Collection image version.

When upgrading to this version, the agent image tag setting should be left blank in the values file, unless there is a need to use a specific version of the Collection Agent for troubleshooting purposes.

Installing Gateway using Helm charts

Beginning Geneos 6.3.0, Gateway can now be installed in the cluster with a setup file. See Installation with a setup file for more information.

Upgrade to Geneos 6.2.x

SQL toolkit plugin for MySQL and MariaDB

The SQL toolkit plugin 6.2.1 and newer has a timeout configuration to cancel the query after the timeout period has passed. As a result of this change, conncection to MySQL and MariaDB databases, configured with or without the new timeout setting, will require an additional connection to handle query cancellation. Please make sure this does not impact the overall maximum allowed client connections to your database.

Installing Netprobe and Collection Agent using Helm charts

Note

If you had already configured a non-default persistence directory where Collection Agent DaemonSet persistence files are stored, then this issue can be ignored.

The default persistence.directory in Netprobe Helm chart version 6.2.1 and older:

persistence:
    directory: /var/lib/geneos/collection-agent-{{ .Release.Name }}

The default persistence.directory in Netprobe Helm chart version 6.2.2 and newer

persistence:
    directory: /var/lib/geneos/collection-agent-{{ .Release.Namespace }}-{{ .Release.Name }}

If you are using the default persistence directory, then upgrading to Netprobe Helm chart version 6.2.2 or newer means any existing persistence data will be lost, including pod logs that may be buffered in the pipeline store and the Kubernetes log collector position files. After upgrading, the log collector will tail existing log files instead of resuming from the last known position. However, if logs.readFromBeginning is true, then we recommend following the workaround below in order to preserve the persistence data and prevent existing pod logs from being reprocessed from the beginning.

As a workaround, you can either do one of the following:

• Configure the persistence.directory path to override the new default with the previous default.

  persistence:
      directory: /var/lib/geneos/collection-agent-{{ .Release.Name }}
  

  Note

  This workaround may result in a clash if two releases with the same name but different namespaces are installed.

• Scale down the DaemonSet by manually renaming the directory to the new default name on each of the affected nodes, and then upgrade your Helm chart to the new version.

Active Console

Workspaces created in Active Console 6.2.0 and newer will have the Follow selection feature in State Tree enabled by default. This means the State Tree will automatically expand to select and identify items selected elsewhere in the Active Console. If you do not want this behavior, you can untick the Enable follow selection setting in Tools > Settings > General > State Tree.

A number of settings in the Active Console Settings dialog are now rearranged to make it easier to use. This change only affects the appearance and grouping of settings it does not change the behavior of Active Console when opening new or existing workspaces.

Upgrade to Geneos 6.0.x

Netprobe and Collection Agent

• Upgrading to Netprobe 6.x requires you to also upgrade the Collection Agent and its plugins to version 3.x. The compatible versions of Collection Agent 3.x and its plugins are packaged with the Netprobe 6.x. The latest versions of Netprobe and Collection Agent are also compatible with updated Helm charts and Docker images.

Note

The configurations, metric names, and dimensions of Collection Agent and its plugins have all changed. These changes are not backward compatible. See Upgrading to Collection Agent 3.x for more information.

• The following Netprobe plugins, which are already deprecated and not supported, are now removed from Netprobe. These plugins no longer work in Geneos 6.0 and newer. However, the plugins may still continue to work in Geneos 5.x, but they remain unsupported. Please contact ITRS Support if you have any concerns.

  • Citrix Apps, Citrix Processes, Citrix Sessions, Citrix Summary
  • Combo
  • Component Versions
  • DQM Compare, DQM Updates
  • Effix Status
  • Fix Cameron Status
  • Gissing
  • RTIC Latency
  • SWX
  • Triarch Latency
  • UL Bridge

• The following Netprobe plugins are now deprecated in configuration and are no longer supported. However, the plugins may still continue to work in Geneos 5.x and 6.x, but they remain unsupported. Please contact ITRS Support if you have any concerns.

  • GL Greffon, GL Lost Orders, GL Order Book, GL Permissions, GL SLC, GL SLC Relay, GL SLE, GL SLE TCP
  • MISS-X
  • PATS Status, PATS Trading Breaches, PATS Users
  • SETS SLC
  • SU
  • Tradeview

• Market Data Monitoring (MDM) plugin in Netprobe 6.0.x and newer does not require an application key file (mdm_appkey.txt) in the Netprobe directory to function. This additional requirement has been removed, but the plugin still requires a valid Licence Daemon token to function.

• The dataview generated by the Netprobe CPU plugin on the Windows platform is now more consistent with other Unix platforms. This means the value in the first column of the dataview listing the name of the logical CPU has changed to cpu_<num>_logical#<num>. This may break existing x-paths that reference the row name. Please check the Gateway configuration with reference to the CPU plugin dataview on the Windows platform.

• The Kubernetes specific Netprobe package (geneos-netprobe-<version>-kubernetes.tar.gz) is no longer available to download from the ITRS Downloads website. Both the Kubernetes plugin and the template Gateway configuration for Kubernetes are now available in the standard Netprobe and the Gateway packages, respectively.   We recommend that you set up Kubernetes monitoring using the Helm Charts available through ITRS Helm repository. See Installation using Helm for more information.

Gateway

• Geneos 6.0 introduced capabilities to centrally manage the Collection Agent configuration (collection-agent.yml) in the Gateway through the Gateway Setup Editor. As part of this change, the Gateway Dynamic Entity configuration section has new settings to manage the Collection Agent. All changes in the Gateway configuration are backward compatible, meaning your current Gateway configuration remains valid when upgrading to Geneos 6.x. For more information, see Collection Agent Setup and Dynamic Entities.

Note: This feature requires Gateway and Netprobe version 6.x. It is also recommended you upgrade Active Console and Gateway Setup Editor to version 6.x.

• If you upgrade Gateway to 6.0 or newer, you must use Active Console 5.4.x or newer due to changes in the way Gateway provides database connection details to Active Console. Older Active Console might still function, but they won’t have the Gateway database connection information needed to query historical data from databases.
• Gateway now adds a new self-monitoring entity named Netprobe Info for every Netprobe that is configured with Dynamic Entities. This is the default behaviour, but it can be disabled in the Operating Environment section of the Gateway configuration. This self-monitoring entity contains the Dynamic Entity Health views that are useful for understanding the data received from the Collection Agent and how that data is represented in Geneos.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.14.x

Geneos and Obcerv connectivity

Geneos 5.14.0 is the first fully supported release that is compatible with ITRS Obcerv 1.0. You might have deployed Geneos Gateway and Netprobe versions older than 5.14.0 to integrate with beta versions of Obcerv. There are several changes to both Netprobe and Gateway such as Publisher plugin settings and Obcerv connection settings, respectively. We recommend you upgrade to version 5.14.0 or newer to minimise any compatibility issues.

Updated Refinitiv RTDS Integration

Geneos 5.14.0 includes an updated Refinitiv RTDS integration. This integration replaces the previous one from Geneos 4.9.0. It is recommended that Dynamic Entities using the old types are re-configured as there have been some structural changes and renaming as part of the rebranding exercise. For more information, see Refinitiv RTDS.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.12.x

Apache Log4j library

The Apache Log4j library in the Active Console, Web Dashboard, Terracotta Messaging integration, and VMware Monitor integration, has been upgraded to 2.17.1 to fix the security vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-44832). We recommend upgrading to the latest version Geneos 5.12.0 or newer.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.11.x

Apache Log4j library

Upgraded the Apache Log4j library to fix the following vulnerabilities:

• The Apache Log4j library in the Active Console, Web Dashboard, Terracotta Messaging integration, and VMware Monitor integration, has been upgraded to 2.17.0 to fix the security vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-45105). We recommend upgrading to the latest version Geneos 5.11.3 or newer.
• The Apache Log4j library in the Active Console, Web Dashboard, Terracotta Messaging integration, and VMware Monitor integration, has been upgraded to 2.16.0 to fix the security vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-45046). We recommend upgrading to the latest version Geneos 5.11.2 or newer.
• The Apache Log4j library in the Active Console, Web Dashboard, Terracotta Messaging integration, and VMware Monitor integration, has been upgraded to 2.15.0 to fix the security vulnerability in Apache Log4j (CVE-2021-44228). We recommend upgrading to the latest version Geneos 5.11.1 or newer.

Dynamic Entity mapping

Netprobe 5.11.0 introduced changes to the Dynamic Entities wherein additional checks are now made to ensure new metric data points being added to an existing entity have a consistent set of dimensions and attributes. As a result of this change, your current Dynamic Entity mapping configuration may reject metric data points that were previously accepted.

You will see the rejected metric in the Dynamic Entity plugin dataview with the reason Entity Dimension clash. Make sure that all metric data points mapped to a single entity have the same set of dimensions and attributes.

Further, Netprobe 5.11.0 removed the old Dynamic entities > Mappings configuration that was first introduced in Geneos 5.1.0. This configuration has already been deprecated and was replaced by more simplified Dynamic entities > Mapping configuration in Geneos 5.7.0.

Publisher plugin

Publisher plugin has been updated so that Success, Failed, and Lost columns no longer just accumulate the number of events. Instead, the columns now show the number of occurrence of each event for each sample interval. We recommend that you review the existing rules that you have set in the Publisher plugin configuration.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.9.x

Netprobe package files per platform

Beginning Geneos 5.9.1, the libssl.so.1.1 and libcrypto.so.1.1 libraries are renamed to libsslgeneos.so.1.1 and libcryptogeneos.so.1.1 respectively for generic Linux and Linux on IBM POWER8 platforms to eliminate the dependency of libcurl to these libraries, and to reduce compatibility issues such as the following scenarios:

• When the Netprobe is run under elevated privileges in Linux, the runtime loader of Linux (ld.so) ignores the RPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, so the Netprobe is unable to load the libraries from <netprobe directory>/lib64. For the libraries to be loaded, the path to <netprobe directory>/lib64 has to be added to the trusted paths of ld.so. This can cause compatibility issues for other applications that run on the same machine. For more information, see Run Netprobe under elevated privileges in Linux.
• When /usr/lib64 or any library folder that has OpenSSL libraries is loaded before the netprobe conf, files are loaded alphabetically in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*. These libraries are not packaged with Netprobe but are in the /usr/lib64 directory. Therefore, they might not be compatible.

Geneos components

The additional HTTP security headers are now applied to all web responses sent on the Geneos communication ports (EMF2 ports):

• X-Frame-Options: sameorigin
• X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
• X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
• Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains

This applies to all Geneos components including debug and ORB pages generated by Netprobes and Gateways.

Licence Daemon

Beginning Geneos 5.9.x, the Licence Daemon detailed report is not available by default. A new command line option -report detail is required to enable a detailed report.

Gateway and Licence Daemon

Both Gateway and Licence Daemon are not compatible with RHEL 6.x (kernel 2.6.32). Both components now require at least RHEL 7.x or higher.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.8.x

Web Dashboard

Geneos 5.8.2 introduced changes to the security.xml file in the Web Server config folder as a result of the upgraded Spring Security libraries.

When upgrading to Geneos 5.8.2 or newer, we recommend that you use this latest version of security.xml and ensure that any previous security.xml files are removed from your local machine. Otherwise, the Web Server will not run properly.

Express Report

Beginning Geneos 5.8.x, the Express Reports feature of Gateway is no longer available.

This feature will continue to be available and supported for Geneos 5.7.x and older until its end of life (EOL) date on 31 December 2021.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.7.x

Publisher plugin

The Publisher plugin Elasticsearch configuration schema has been refactored to support additional publishing destinations.

The plugin configuration prior to version 5.7.1 is not compatible with versions 5.7.1 and higher. We recommend that you update the configuration after upgrading to Geneos 5.7.1 and higher.

Hardware plugin

The following metrics in the Hardware plugin have been changed:

• ntpAvailability is now timeSyncSource.
• ntpLocalClockOffset is now timeSyncOffset.

For more information, see Hardware documentation.

IBM i plugin

Beginning Geneos 5.7.x, the severityCodeFilter metric and filters > queueNameFilter configuration in the IBM i Queue plugin have been deprecated.

The new filters for Queue library and Queue name replaces the filters > queueNameFilter.

Web Dashboard

Web Dashboard requires the fontconfig package to be installed in the system to start up. Beginning Geneos 5.7.x, Web Dashboard now uses Open Sans as its default font when a required font is not available in the system.

For more information, see Fontconfig dependency in Web Dashboard documentation.

Dynamic Entities

The new and simplified mapping configuration replaces the Dynamic Mapping Configuration. Any existing configurations using the previous setup will continue to work. However, we recommend you migrate to the new Dynamic Entities > Mapping:

• Dynamic entities > Mapping type > Entity timeout — the new default entity time out value is increased from 2 minutes to 1 hour.
• Dynamic entities > Mapping type > Stale data timeout — this is a new setting in this release to mark individual dataviews as containing stale data if the data has not been updated within the set timeout. The default is 2 minutes.

Gateway publishing to Gateway Hub

Beginning Geneos 5.7, Gateway supports publishing data to Gateway Hub without schema. This schema-less publishing of data from Gateways is supported beginning Gateway Hub 2.4.x.

If you upgrade your Gateway to version 5.7.x or higher and you have many dataviews in the Gateway without a valid schema, then it is recommended that you also upgrade Gateway Hub to version 2.4.x or higher to take advantage of the automatic inference of schema in the Gateway Hub. Gateway Hub 2.3.x and older will continue to report ingestion errors if a dataview is published without a schema.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.6.x

New binary file name for Geneos third-party plugins

The binary file naming convention in ITRS Downloads has been changed from <plugin><version>.tar.gz to <plugin>-<version>.tar.gz. This change applies to all Geneos versions.

New ITRS Maven repository

The Maven repository has changed its location from <url>https://itrsgroup.bintray.com/collection</url> to <url>https://maven.itrsgroup.com/repository/public</url>. Please update all the existing links as they will stop working by end of February 2021.

New workspace directory in Active Console

Beginning 5.6.x, now sets the new workspace default directory to the following paths:

• On : ~\ITRS\ActiveConsole
• On and : ~/ITRS/ActiveConsole/

The new default workspace directory is used when creating a new workspace, but all existing workspaces are not affected. For more information, see Workspace directory in Active Console.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.5.x

New binary file name for Geneos components

As part of the improvements to automate our deployment process, the binary file naming convention in ITRS Downloads has been changed from geneos-<component>-<version>.<os>.tar.gz to geneos-<component>-<version>-<os>.tar.gz. This change applies beginning 5.5.x.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.4.x

Self-monitoring in Geneos

Beginning 5.4.x, self-monitoring in is now enabled by default with no configuration required.

This results in an Entity being dynamically created called <gateway_name> Info which contains samplers and dataviews that are automatically enabled with no configuration required. These samplers and dataviews are created using the existing plugins which you may already have manually configured in your .

If you do not wish the to automatically create a self-monitoring Entity, you can disable this feature in the > Operating environment section.

For more information, see operatingEnvironment > selfMonitoring in Operating Environment documentation.

E4JMS plugin

Beginning 5.4.x, the E4JMS plugin supports SSL client authentication. This feature introduces breaking changes to the E4JMS plugin SSL implementation for older versions.

If you are using SSL connections on your E4JMS plugins, you must update your configuration when using the new schema.

For more information, see E4JMS Plugin Technical Reference.

File Keyword Monitor plugin

Beginning 5.4.x, the plugin uses Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) by default. Be aware that this may introduce breaking changes in your implementation.

For more information, see the following documentation in the :

• Regular expressions
• Notable differences between POSIX and PCRE

Upgrade to Geneos 5.2.x

State Tracker plugin

The Rewind option in is now disabled by default.

For more information, see trackerGroup > trackers > tracker > rewind in Technical Reference. If you enable this option, this may cause a sudden increase in your CPU usage with no known changes in the monitored file. Since the State Tracker will track the monitored file from the beginning, and not when the file grows for new events.

Dynamic Entities

and have each been updated to support licensing of plugins. All three of these components must be updated to 5.2.x or higher for the feature to be supported in .

plugins require an additional licence to use. Please contact your Account Manager or Sales.

Gateway and Licence Daemon

If you are upgrading to 5.2.x or higher, you must also upgrade to version 5.2.x or higher.

StatsD Plugin

The configuration in the packaged (collection-agent.yml) now uses the default protocol UDP and port 8125. Previously, this was set to protocol TCP and port 7780.

Upgrade to Geneos 5.0.x

Important

• The Maven repository has changed its location from <url>https://itrsgroup.bintray.com/collection</url> to <url>https://maven.itrsgroup.com/repository/public</url>. Please update all the existing links as they will stop working by end of February 2021.
• 5.1.x is not generally available to download except for 5.1.0 -64 package certified for deployment on Solace devices. Please download version 5.2.x or newer for all other deployments.
• Support for 3.x ended on 30 April 2020. We strongly advise you to upgrade to version 4.x or newer as soon as possible.
• From the release of 5.0.x, there will be no interoperability with other components older than version 3.6.x. In order to successfully deploy or upgrade to 5.0.x in a staged manner, you must first ensure that no other connecting components are older than version 3.6.x. This change is a result of the removal of LZO compression support in the inter-component EMF2 communication protocol.
• plugins require an additional licence to use. Please contact your Account Manager or Sales.

If you have any question or concerns, please contact ITRS Support.

Netprobe

The Hardware plug-in now uses a new method of obtaining memoryAvailable and memoryAvailablePct for Linux platforms. The metrics are now based on the same calculation Linux uses to calculate the memAvailable field in /proc/meminfo. For more information, see the Hardware Plug-in documentation.

Ensure that any affected Gateway rules and thresholds are reviewed.

Gateway

Gateway 5.0 cannot publish data to Gateway Hub 1.4 or older versions. This is due to the changes in the publishing format in order to improve performance.

Gateway Setup Editor now enables the Simplified Comments by default. With simplifiedComments enabled, GSE removes all icons that indicate comments. You can only add, edit, or remove comments on named components in the Navigation panel.

The API for centralised configuration has changed since Early Access. Upgrade to Gateway 5.0 to use the centralised configuration with Gateway Hub 1.6 and above.

Active Console

Active Console 5.0 now supports a new light theme user interface. The Look and Feel in the Advanced settings has been removed.

Platforms and settings changes

Beginning with version 5.0, these Gateway settings are deprecated:

• Managed Entity > Banner (Advanced tab)
• Sampler > Publish (Visibility tab)

Changes to default Gateway configuration in version 5.0:

• DatabaseLogging > logNetprobeSampleTimeForDataItems default is now True.
• Actions > action > sharedLibrary > runThreaded default is now True.
• Effects > effect > sharedLibrary > runThreaded default is now True.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.11.x

In the Gateway, the behaviour of the _COMMENT environment variable has changed for actions fired by the unassignment of a data item. Previously, the comment provided when the item was assigned was placed in the _COMMENT environment variable for both assignment and unassignment events. It is now possible to configure Gateways to require comments for both assignment and unassignment events. This means for actions fired by unassignment events, the comment provided when the item is unassigned is placed in the _COMMENT environment variable. The comment that was provided when the item was originally assigned is now moved to a new environment variable called _PREVIOUS_COMMENT.

Improved the Context Sensitive Help (CSH) for Gateway Setup Editor (Gateway Setup Editor) that is based on the specific content available online. Context sensitive help will launch your default browser to access the content online. To know more about this, see Host the documentation locally to use GSE context-sensitive help in Gateway Setup Editor.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.7.x

Geneos 4.7.x release introduces changes to the way arguments are parsed to Commands, Actions, and Effects.

These changes were required to provide consistent behaviour and understanding across both Netprobe and Gateway to simplify user experience.

We strongly recommend you check the configuration and behaviour of any Commands, Actions, and Effects before deploying to production.

For more information, see Commands, Actions and Effects.

Upgrade to Geneos 4.0.x

The following changes are introduced to Geneos 4.0.x packages:

• Name of the package file is geneos-<component>-<version>.<platform>.<tar.gz/zip>.
  • For example, geneos-netprobe-4.0.0.solaris-x64.tar.gz.
• Packages contains a root directory .
• Libraries are located within a sub-directory named lib or lib64: