November 2005 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

custom client script and disable
by Steve.DiSorbo＠yale.edu 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

I didn't get any answers on this so I am posting it again. Hobbit Monitor 4.1.2 I wrote a client script to monitor an application, added to the clientlaunch.cfg file restarted hobbit, the monitor works well Because the application I am monitoring is faulty I added to the client script a section of code to start up the application should it fail. I shut down the application and Hobbit starts it up ... Cool. To avoid having the application start up during the backup or maintenance window I disable the client script. I ran a test backup to be sure it worked, but it appears that Hobbit executes the client script even when the test is disabled, and the application goes from blue to red to green. So now the 64K question ... what can I change so the test does not run when disabled or ... where did I error? Thanks.

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[hobbit] Hobbit client for Windows
by v.everett＠afgonline.com.au 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

Hi all As I understand it, (and somebody please correct me where I go wrong) to get a Hobbit client for working for Wondoze will require 3 components. 1. We need a Windoze client to collect the standard data 2. We need a server module to be able to interpret the data 3. We need a method of extending the client with script or external applications. Cygwin can only take us part the way there. It will allow us to compile the current client, but can't collect all the data. It will allow us to extend the functionality, but we are still limited to command line. Once we get 1 and 3 above working, item 2 should be pretty simple to do. We need a few Windoze programming boffins on this one. Does anybody on this list know of or work with any? Regards Vernon ----- No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many electrons were terribly inconvenienced. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ NOTICE: This message and any attachments are confidential and may contain copyright material of Australian Finance Group Limited or a third party. It is intended solely for the purpose of the addressee and any other named recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, any use, distribution, disclosure or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. The confidentiality attached to this message is not waived or lost by reason of the mistaken transmission or delivery to any unintended party. If you have received this message in error, please notify the author immediately or contact Australian Finance Group on +61 8 9420 7888.

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hobbitclient + msgs test sugesstion
by peter.welter＠gmail.com 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

Hello Henrik + fellow hobbiters, Since the msgs-check is not available yet in the Hobbit display, I want to make a suggestion to have it enabled relatively easy. I think of two methods: -1- A client must have read access to the file, lets say /var/adm/messages, but that has a major drawback: you can only monitor one [predefined] file. Anyway, you can pass on the major BB functionality. But any other logfiles, as (is/was) possible with bb-msgtab is discarded. -2- Your Hobbit server must _also_ be a central loghost. In this way, all configuration remains on the Hobbit server (a GREAT welcome Hobbit-feature). You, Henrik, can even define the format that you want the central loghost being set up. Fi. seperate .info, .debug -> green, .kern -> yellow, etc. Each host can use up a history of one week message-files and serious trouble can be set up/defined within, let's say, /etc/hobbit-client-messages.cfg. Now it is even possible to have this setup work for another logfile, let's say, /var/log/mail? Perhaps (I am googling rigth now) this is useful: http://freshmeat.net/projects/syslog-ng/ but I guess this paints the picture. Well, that's just my 2 cents. Regards, Peter

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Change of column name
by frederic.mangeant＠steria.com 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

Hi all since upgrading from bbgen to Hobbit (4.1.2p1), some of my tests's case has changed : for example, my column "Oracle" is now called "oracle". The BB client is still sending the good case : /home/bbuser/bin/bb 10.50.80.44 status HQSTERIAOAINT.Oracle green Wed Nov 30 10:49:19 NFT 2005 Oracle test on "INTE FSTE RUTI ADMV AR04": OK Running hobbitd with "--dbghost=HQSTERIAOAINT" shows the good case too : ---- status message from 10.1.5.13 ---- status HQSTERIAOAINT.Oracle green Wed Nov 30 10:57:08 NFT 2005 Oracle test on "INTE FSTE RUTI ADMV AR04": OK On the Hobbit server, results are stored in ~data/histlogs/HQSTERIAOAINT/oracle, and the Hobbit map shows a column "oracle". When upgrading from bbgen to Hobbit, I move the content of bbvar/hist and bbvar/histlogs to ~data/hist and ~data/histlogs. What could be wrong ? Thanks for your help. -- Frédéric Mangeant Steria EDC Sophia-Antipolis

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poll period
by billieperez＠gmail.com 30 Nov '05

30 Nov '05

Hi, I upgraded to Hobbit a few months ago and really happy with it. I have a question regarding the polling interval and why it always says 0 seconds when unreachable for 1 poll period. I have increased my fping to -r6 and thought the poll period be higher. Is there a change that has to be made in hobbitlaunch.cfg to increase the poll period? Thanks in advance, Bill

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[hobbit] hobbitclient + msgs test sugesstion
by steve.aiello＠ge.com 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

> So - I think some other solution is needed, and I've been > thinking about how to do it. So far it's just ideas - no > code. But I believe the log checking has to happen on each > client, but controlled by a central configuration. So what I > plan to implement is something like this: > > * The configuration of what logs to monitor and what strings to > look for is maintained on the central Hobbit server, either as > an addition to the hobbit-clients.cfg file, or in a separate > file - that isn't really important. > * When a client connects and sends in a client-side message, the > Hobbit server accepts the client message, but also sends back > the current log-check configuration info. By re-using the > client connection, the overhead involved in pushing the > configuration to each client becomes almost nil. > * When the client has a log-check configuration, it knows what logs > to check for what strings, and can include that information in > the normal client message it sends back to the Hobbit server. > That means the client will need a tool to do the logfile checking; > probably using a client-side regular-expression matching tool > like "grep". It can either be built into the Hobbit client, or > it could just rely on the existing "grep" utility found on the > system - this would probably be the simplest to implement. > I had come to the same conclusion when trying to think how to implement msgs tests in a 'hobbit' way. So it seems that hobbit needs some manner of 'push' mechanism. Of course this is just pushing configuration, but since you are talking about a 'push' mechanism what about pushing files too ? Though this option may be cosidered a security hole. But this would be nice for pushing out updates. Whether it is a full Hobbit client update, or if a particular script/test needed to be pushed out and updated. Pushing out files could be a configureable option that can be enable/disabled.

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Hobbit & MRTG - has anyone seen this?
by Shawn.Maschino＠ge.com 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

Hi all, I'm using Hobbit with MRTG and have it set up with the bb-mrtg.pl script. It is looking quite nice, the network admins love it, but today on the non-green view page I had a server pop up with a column for "traffic" being purple, and when clicking on it it brings me some switch details being populated in via MRTG. That was a bit surprising, I hadn't seen a "traffic" column anywhere else, and my first guess was that the IP for the server and switch may have been accidentally entered as the same, but they weren't. The switch is also reporting in via MRTG, the data is updating every 5 minutes even though it is showing as purple. I'm about at the end of my troubleshooting thought process, has anyone seen something like this before? Thanks, Shawn Maschino Technical Services - Server Operations GE Plastics shawn.maschino at ge.com

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[hobbit] Menu system suggestions
by smith.js.8＠pg.com 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

A correction to my own post. In order to prevent the "help" user from gaining access to the "admin" function, you need to create groups to control access. I'll post those changes tomorrow. Scott

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Menu system suggestions
by smith.js.8＠pg.com 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

Henrik et al I've found that the default width on the menu items does not work for some browsers. It is just a bit too narrow. Increasing the width from 150 to 160 seems to solve the problem in every browser I can get my hands on. In the file server/www/menu/menu_tpl.js change line 25 to read: 'width': 160, I've also found it useful to have the help system password protected. In the file server/etc/hobbit-apache.conf add the following to the end of the file: # See above for instructions on creating users. I generally # create a 'help' user for accessing this separately from # the administrator options. Alias /monitor/help/ "/home/hobbit/server/www/help/" <Directory "/home/hobbit/server/www/help"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes MultiViews Order allow,deny Allow from all AuthUserFile /home/hobbit/server/etc/hobbitpasswd AuthType Basic AuthName "Hobbit Help" Require valid-user </Directory> Of course, this file is created duing configuration, so I'm sure there is a change necessary in the config system if this should become part of the installed options. I've also found it quite a pain to not have the hobbit menu system at the top of the documentation pages. I have a script that makes it rather simple to add the menu system into the entire documentation tree, post-install. The script is pasted below. To use it, I put the script in /server/bin and then use these commands: # cd /home/hobbit/server/www/help # for file in *.html */*.html */*/*.html > do > /home/hobbit/server/bin/hobbit-html.sh "$file" > /tmp/html.$$ > cp /tmp/html.$$ "$file" > done # rm /tmp/html.$$ If you don't install hobbit in the root of your server (for example, I put it in the /monitor path of my server) then you'll need to use the --path option: > /home/hobbit/server/bin/hobbit-html.sh --path "/monitor" "$file" > /tmp/html.$$ Here is the hobbit-html.sh script: #!/bin/bash #----------------------------------------------------------- # Program : hobbit-html.sh # Purpose : Prepares an html file for use within the hobbit # monitor web system. # Author : Scott Smith <smith.js.8 at pg.com> # Release : 28 Nov 2005 # License : Public Domain #----------------------------------------------------------- SYNTAX="syntax: ${0##*/} [--help] [--path] htmlfile" case "$1" in -h|"") echo "$SYNTAX" exit 1 ;; --help) echo "$SYNTAX" echo " where: --path is the path prefix where Hobbit is installed" echo echo " This is not required if Hobbit is installed relative" echo " to the root / path in the URL." echo echo " Example: If Hobbit is installed in the /monitor URL," echo " then '--path /monitor' is required in order for the" echo " menu system to find its files." echo exit 1 ;; --path) URL="$1" HTML="$2" ;; *) URL="" HTML="$1" ;; esac [ -f "$HTML" ] || { echo "error: not found - $1" ; exit 2 ; } awk --assign URL="$URL" -- ' /<[/][Hh][Ee][Aa][Dd]>.*<[Bb][Oo][Dd][Yy]>/ { style() print body1() next } /<[/][Hh][Ee][Aa][Dd]>/ { style() print next } /<[Bb][Oo][Dd][Yy]>/ { print body1() next } /<[/][Bb][Oo][Dd][Yy]>/ { body2() print next } { print } function style() { print "" print "" print "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"" URL "/menu/ nu.css\">" print "" } function body1() { print "" print "<p> </p> " print "" } function body2() { print "" print "" print "<script type=\"text/javascript\" language=\"JavaScript\" src=\"" URL "/menu/menu.js\"></script>" print "" print "<script type=\"text/javascript\" language=\"JavaScript\" src=\"" URL "/menu/menu_tpl.js\"></script>" print "<script type=\"text/javascript\" language=\"JavaScript\">" print " new menu (MENU_ITEMS, MENU_POS);" print "</script>" print "" } ' "$HTML" fi #EOF(hobbit-html.sh) It appears much of the docs, in particular the man pages, is generated via a script. I don't know how difficult it might be for these changes to become configuration time options. However, it would be easy enough for this script to be productized into the install if desired. Enjoy... Scott

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Dumb hobbit network test question
by KauffmanT＠nibco.com 29 Nov '05

29 Nov '05

I've just done my tri-annual hardware shuffle, swapping out all my on-lease RS-6000 for brand spanking new systems. Part of this included upgrading from AIX 5.1 to AIX 5.3. Now, on half the systems (the last set replaced) I get errors on the smtp and ftp tests -- typically one test every two hours. Interestingly, all these systems barf on the same test cycle. This is obviously something not quite right in the AIX config, but I'm at a loss on what. I just found out today that we also have production rsh scripts that time out on the same cycle (yeah, I know -- but they've been rsh since year dot, and getting them to ssh is real low on the list . . ) Here's a sample of the network test error: Service ftp on hudson is not OK : Unexpected service response Service smtp on hudson is not OK : Unexpected service response How can I log the actual response? I'm currently running hobbit 4.03rc1; that's scheduled to change sometime next week. Other suggestions? TIA -- Tom Kauffman NIBCO, Inc

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