Men & Mice Community

Below is the changelog (new features and fixed issues) for Version 6.2 which is now available on the Men & Mice FTP Servers: ftp://ftp.menandmice.com/pub/mmsuite

High Level overview:

Automatic updates (available on Windows, Solaris and Linux)
Management of system updates has been greatly simplified through the
Automatic Update feature. The Men & Mice Suite can be configured so that
the server controllers and the Management Console are automatically
updated when a new version of Men & Mice Central is installed.

Web Interface
The web interface has been rewritten from ground up. Usability has been
improved significantly and various new features are available from
within the Web UI.

Zone transfers on Windows servers
Zone transfer settings can be automatically configured on Windows DNS
servers when creating dynamic zones or changing zones from static to
dynamic, elimininating the need of manually configuring those settings.

IPv6 support in Sites and Subnets.
The Sites and Subnets feature has been improved by allowing the
management of IPv6 subnets.

Improved DHCP error checking.
Consistency checking of split scopes on MS DHCP servers has been
enhanced by implementing a number of new DHCP consistency checks.

Purging of DNS server cache.
The cache of DNS servers can be purged from within the Men & Mice Suite.

Improved display for ranges and scopes.
The list view for ranges and scopes has been improved and now contains
information on whether host discovery is enabled.

Cleanup of concurrent leases.
Version 6.2 of the Men & Mice Suite can find and release multiple
concurrent DHCP leases for the same MAC address.

Cleanup of Orphaned PTR records.
Orphaned PTR records (PTR records without matching address (A) records)
can be hard to track down and these records can clutter the DNS
environment. Version 6.2 of the Men & Mice Suite can find and remove
orphaned PTR records.

Scope Monitoring.
A common problem on networks using DHCP is the exhaustion of free
addresses in DHCP address pools. The Scope Monitoring feature checks the
number of free addresses in DHCP address pools and alerts the user when
the addresses are running out.

MS SQL Server support.
Large enterprises require a powerful database to handle the large
amounts of data that need to be stored. The Men & Mice Suite now
supports the MS SQL Server as a database engine for the system.

The SOAP interface.
The Men & Mice Suite SOAP interface enables access to and from external
applications or scripts using industry standard protocols. The SOAP
interface is being used by the new web UI. The SOAP interface has been
further improved and documented with sample code. Combined, these tools
can be used to customize the solution by creating customer specific web
tasks.

Detail changelog:

All

Error messages for unexpected conditions should now be more specific

Worked around networking quirks on Solaris systems

Central is now able to automatically update all server controllers, and offer users with older versions of the Management Console a chance to download an update

Management Console

Added "Find Orphaned PTR Records" feature

Added "Concurrent Leases" feature

Added option for automatically placing subnets of a range in a folder to the same folder as the parent

Added option allowing user to choose whether a scope that is removed from outside the M&M Suite should be deleted or turned into an address range

Disconnecting from multiple DHCP servers at the same time only prompts the user once

Find Next Free Address now also works in scope window

Find Next Free Address now selects the found address and shows error message if no address was found

Pressing Backspace in a multi-value edit field clears the edit field

IPv6 ranges can now be entered in the "from-to" format like IPv4 addresses

Split Range command is now enabled for /65 to /128 IPv6 ranges

When creating scopes, check if the scope exists as soon as the user closes the first dialog, instead of waiting until he has entered all the scope data

Folder and filter names can now contain quotes

It is now possible to specify a limit in the system message query window

Ranges now inherit AD sites from their parent range. A range can not be assigned to an AD site if one of its parent ranges or one of its subranges is already assigned to an AD Site

Syntax checker for RP records is now more strict

Fixed bug which caused "Select Parent" not to work when quick filter was active in range tree

In DNS Expert result window, filtered messages are drawn in gray when filter is not active

When selecting multiple addresses in the IP Address Range window, the "Delete" command is enabled even when one or more of the addresses has no data

In scope options/properties windows, it was not possible to remove arrays from multiple objects at once if the arrays were of different sizes

Migrate scope wizard now handles split scopes gracefully

"Access..." menu item is now only visible for users that have allowed to modify access

"Range Properties" menu item is now available for users that do not have 'Edit Properties' access. However, they can not click the OK button

Right-click menu in Manager window should no longer show empty "Enable/Disable" submenu when invoked on objects other than scopes

Manager window should no longer show up in a weird location upon first login for users that get the Startup Warning dialog

When an IP address has multiple A/AAAA records, we only remove the related records when the last one is deleted in the IPAM dialog

Status of scope monitoring and ping schedule is now shown in range list in Manager window

Double clicking on an AD site in the Manager window now selects the range in the left-hand view to show the subnets within

Added system settings for fine-tuning the split-scope reservation mismatch warnings

Fixed bug where creating IPv6 ranges with lowercase hex chars would cause the Console to think that the starting address did not match the mask

Editing and fixing reservations in split scopes did not work correctly

Resized Fix Reservation window so that the reservations would not be clipped

Migrate Scope Wizard can now split address pool when creating split scope

Disabled max window limit in command line

Central

SOAP interface widely expanded

Added support for MS SQL Server

Added scope monitoring feature

Fixed memory leak in server synchronization

AD Sites and Subnets feature now supports IPv6 subnets

Reverse record updater now correctly ignores wildcard A and AAAA records

MAC Addresses are now formatted for consistency before they are saved in the database

Access checks were optimized, speeding up login through the Management Console

When a DHCP scope appears in synchronization that exactly matches an existing range, the range is converted to a scope

Fixed bug where scopes were created on DHCP server but not in database when user with insufficient access privileges tried to create a scope

Correctly handle sporadic failures when zone transfers timed out

We now ignore duplicate and redundant records in zone transfers, as Windows 2008R2 servers may return duplicate A records for glue data and delete/create pairs for non-existing records

Upgraded SQLite library to 3.6.21

Upgraded crypto library to 5.6

Optimized lease history queries

Fixed issue where Central would sometimes fail to open a database file larger than 2.2 Gb

Gracefully recover if database table "dual" disappears

Fixed numerous issues which could cause Central to think that ranges were scopes and vice versa

Sync interval specified in preferences.cfg should now be honored

A subnet in an AD Site and an IP range with the "Reserve Network and Broadcast address" are no longer regarded to be in conflict

We now resolve the host name of DHCP servers when connecting to them instead of only when they are added to the database

Added support for running an external script when zone contents change

When attempting to sync zones from AD servers, try to sync from other DNS servers if primary server is down

Fixed scope synchronization so that scopes that are split up outside the Suite get synced back correctly

Added rollback when one zone update in a batch fails

When a zone is de-signed, it is no longer marked as "Master-Secure"

Added object types "device" and "interface" to object model. Currently hidden as they are only used in one custom interface

DNS Server Controller

Fixed handling of options in views

Added special handling for adding/deleting RP records

When running in chroot, we now always take the chroot directory into account when creating new files

Fixed zonefile locking issue which was sometimes caused zone creation to fail on Windows

On Windows 2008R2, try to use the dnscmd.exe program supplied with the system instead of the one distributed with the Men & Mice DNS Server Controller

Fixed parsing of zone transfer options on Windows 2008R2

Correctly handle spaces in paths to executables

Added command to flush a DNS servers' cache

DNS Server Controller can now automatically adjust zone transfer settings to make sure that Central can access zone contents

DHCP Server Controller

Improved parsing of complex ISC configuration files

Improved parsing of leases. Lease names are no longer prepended with a space or hyphen

Changing scope properties no longer leaves stale properties in cache

Fixed history logging when changing scope properties

Increased buffer sizes when talking to Windows DHCP servers, boosting performance

Ignore option 81 on Win 2008R2 server because it can not be set there

We now use dhcpsapi when reading leases on Windows

Improved shared-network support on ISC servers

Web

Rewritten from scratch

Update agent

New in this release

Installers

UNIX installer split into "central" and "controllers" installers

Windows installers converted from MSI to EXE format

Mac web installer rewritten

Hello, I installed and I must say that it's just great! congratulations works wonderfull.

I would only add this insignificant features

1) in web interface the posibility to "clone or duplicate" a "generic or master zone created" such as in the "duplicate" option available in "menandmice Management console"
2) in web interface the posibility to "Enable" a disabled domain
3) in web interface the posibility to "Disable" a domain
4) in web interface the posibility to "duplicate" a domain
5) in web interface to "add" to the other dns the zone just created

6) in Command Line, the posibility to:
7) Enable a disabled domain

Disable an enabled domain
9) "Duplicate" a domain

10) to have some sort of checkbox in web interface with all dns to be replicated

I guess with this aditions we may work without having to keep a windows machine devoted to menandmice Management Console, and just do our task on a better way.

Other than this, it's a great asset and we are going to upgrade all our servers to this latest version

Hello Javier,

I will forward your requests to our product management team. Most of your requests are already on the backlog list, but the more customers ask for it, the better is the chance that they are implemented soon.

-- Carsten

Any good news?

I'd like to have this features before I say goodbye to my Men And Mice Management Console version 5.1.3 running on Mac.

I'd like to manage everything from web and console (secure shell) that's why this is really necesary.

Also scripting software to activate deactivate, create, modify etc. works better under secure shell.

Please advise.

Hello Javier,

I've send a personal mail (PM) on the topic.