Home : Projects : Plink
Plink 1.x is a Windows application, written in Visual Basic 6 as a learning exercise when I had to learn the language for my current employer. It manifests itself as a Systray icon with a context menu, which can be double clicked to bring up a small, simple user interface which can be used to view the status and metadata of a set of configured target hosts.
It has a basic discovery function (a ping sweep scan) and is also capable of looking up certain metadata including hostnames (from DNS) and node types (it can assign a type name to a node based on the presence of a process with a particular name) and versions (the version numbers of the executable files of the identifying processes).
Once a set of hosts is defined, Plink will poll them every now and then, using colour highlighting of the node icons in the main user interface and of the Systray icon to indicate node and overall state.
1.x Releases
A few words of warning about Plink 1.x:
- It is insufficiently generalised
- It is not scalable
- It is not very stable
- It's built with the wrong technology
- It's not well designed or written
- There's no documentation
Not Scalable
Plink 1.x is entirely built into its Systray applet. This means that if you have a single Plink user, or any small number, it's OK, but as soon as you get a larger number you'll find the many Plink instances hammering the network harder and harder as they all try to keep polling and keeping their separate data sets up to date.
It's also really only any use for monitoring a relatively small number of nodes, because they are considered to be part of a flat set. You can load and save multiple different sets of hosts, but monitoring tools really need to be able to handle larger numbers of hosts in order to really be useful.
Not Very Stable
Being a VB application, and a fairly naively written one at that, Plink is pretty susceptible to hanging for extended periods, and even sticking forever. This could be improved upon in future 1.x releases if there are any.
Wrong Technology
I mean, ye gods, VB6. Unportable, obsolete and just damn ugly.
Not Well Designed or Written
I wrote Plink as a learning excercise when learning VB6. As such, it's not well thought out or well designed; if I was to write something like it again, I'd go about many things differently. Because of the fundamentally flawed design, it's unlikely that the minor problems are going to be fixed; I don't foresee many more 1.x releases.
No Documentation
Currently there's no documentation at all. I do plan on writing some, but in the meantime, you'll just have to read the source and/or feel your way around it!
2.x Releases
Plink 2.x is not really descended from Plink 1.x in any fundamental way; I just liked the name and the concept of a Panel / Systray client. For an overview of the planned features of the 'next generation' of Plink, click here. I'll add more documents related to the design as I go along, and start centering this project page more around the new version when it feels like I've reached a stage where there's an actual system to talk about.