The organisation I work for has a fairly heavy reliance on The Dude but we are currently running 4b3 on a Windows 2012 virtual server. In fact we run multiple Dude instances (some are agents) but all on W2K12. Some of the probes, functions and alerts that we have developed over the years use the "execute" function - so have been designed specifically for the Windows OS.

I was very excited to see that a new version of The Dude had been released by Mikrotik some time ago (but then disappointed to find that The Dude server would no longer run on a Windows platform). Mind you - I can understand why that decision was made.

So firstly - is there any possibility that Mikrotik will release a Windows version of The Dude server any time soon?

If no imminent Windows version this will mean considerable work rewriting our custom probes, functions and alerts to get the current functionality on the Mikrotik router OS. Either that or we try to find some other monitoring system that meets our needs (quite probably at significant expense). Before we can make the decision I think we first need to understand what we'd need to do to be able to continue with The Dude - so is someone able to provide the following information:

1. We have an ESX farm - is there a Mikrotik router virtual appliance that can run The Dude server? What cost for purchase/licencing - if it does exist.
2. Does the "execute" function still exist in the latest Dude?
3. If we can write an execute probe, what can be done with that (is the router OS Linux or similar - so we could execute a Bash Script)?
4. Does The Dude client still run on Windows - if so, is this going to continue to be the case?

We have the same problem

Any info on my queries from the Mikrotik team?

Do not expect Windows dude server anymore.
1. Run dude server in CHR virtually. it can be fully licensed legally at no cost.
2.3. Cannot say, I do no use that functionality. But you can easily try.
4. Client still runs in Windows environment. Both real and emulated.

Note that syslog functionality was partially removed.

Just install the CHR, import the dude database and try how it works before you make a decision what to do further.

Thanks for the info. What you've suggested seems like a no risk way to see what we can do to get out of our situation. Excuse my ignorance, but what is CHR? Where can I download it?

Cloud Hosted Router, see https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:CHR and the download page at https://mikrotik.com/download

Thanks for the info everyone. I'll have a look at it.

I have set up The Dude server on CHR in VirtualBox on my laptop and using a Win7 Virtualbox VM to run The Dude client. Most features/functions I need are still there and work as previously (from the rudimentary testing that I have done so far).

However - the "execute" function no longer exists. The "ros_command" function appears to be the nearest equivalent and may be able to be used, with some re-thinking, to get last few bits that we want.

I have had a bit of a look at the on-line RouterOS scripting documentation and it seems fairly limited. I'll need to spend some more time seeing what I can do with the scripting to determine if we can stick with The Dude.

I've hit a bit of a roadblock with trying to make the ros_command function work. Not sure if this is a Dude issue or a Router OS issue but figured I'd continue this thread as it relates directly to migrating to the latest Dude.

I am trying to write a probe that will read the contents of a file on the CHR router and if the file does not say "OK" then the probe displays the file content as the error.

I have successfully:
1. enabled SMB on the CHR and used an external Windows PC to write the file that The Dude will read
2. written a script (using Winbox) on the CHR that reads the file and compares the content. When I run the script through Winbox the variables are set as expected with different file contents. The script is named IsOK 3. Created a device with an appearance that has this line: [ros_command("system script run IsOK")]. My understanding is that this should invoke the ros_command function which should run the script on the CHR each time the device is polled (default settings) but it does not seem to do so as examining the environment variables using WinBox does not indicate that they are changing when the file contents changes. Also the WinBox "run count" for the script is not incrementing.

Is anyone able to point me in the right direction of where I am going wrong with this?