November 2007 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

ntpdate question
by Dirk.Kastens＠uni-osnabrueck.de 09 Mar '08

09 Mar '08

Hi, before updating our hobbit server to version 4.2.0, I tested the ntp configuration with the bb-ntp-1_4.sh script on the client nodes. When I now configure the server to use the ntp network test instead, I realize that this doesn't work with most of our RedHat clients. I get the response ntpdate -u -q -p 2 a.b.c.d server a.b.c.d, stratum 0, offset 0.000000, delay 0.00000 29 Aug 10:53:26 ntpdate[3509]: no server suitable for synchronization found The network test works with all AIX clients and with older RedHat clients. The manual page of ntpdate on a RedHat machine says, that "the ntpdate program is to be retired from this distribution". Is there another way of testing the ntp synchronisation from the server side or do I still have to use the bb-ntp.sh script? Best wishes, Dirk Kastens

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More Granular data than 300 second samples, duh!
by scott＠PacketPushers.com 03 Feb '08

03 Feb '08

One of the most common requests to the trending of data is "How do I make the charts graph data samples which are smaller than 300 seconds?" And the answer has been, you have the source, have fun. The original design decision that Henrik inherited was larrd should only be for capacity planning and NOT real-time performance analysis. Do one thing and do it well. I had a thought the other day, and I think we could possibly get the "best of both worlds." Instead of $ vmstat 300 2 (resulting in one 300 second sample) why not $ vmstat 5 61 (resulting in sixty 5 second samples) The data would still only be transported every five minutes, but contain more granular samples. This could not be done for all metrics, but many. This would also require the RRAs of the all the RRDs be re-made (export, re-create, import). But I've that's been on my mind anyway cause the original RRA structure was based on screen sizes for 800x600, instead of business requirements. Henrik, do you follow my thinking? It's kinda hard for me to believe it's taken me over five years to think of this! My biggest concern is not the technical details of the collectors and RRD/RRA restructuring, but inflicting resource usage on servers measuring themselves. $ vmstat 1 301 would definitely be a bad idea. Scott Walters -PacketPusher

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Highlights of the 4.3.0 version
by spa＠syntec.co.uk 03 Jan '08

03 Jan '08

Henrik, The new features sound good! But are they now documented? I checked the snapshot and none of man pages or the Changes page seem to have been updated since the 4.2.0 release. It makes it quite difficult to test and use the new features (which presumably is a requirement before releasing the new version)! ;-) Or am I missing something less obvious than using the source (TM)? I think it would be useful if the Changes page (http://www.hswn.dk/beta/snapshot/Changes) was kept more or less up-to-date for the snapshot releases. Knowing what has changed in hobbit-server betas seems pretty difficult without downloading frequent snapshots and doing diffs. Is there any chance of the source being put into a public subversion / CVS repository or something? I see there is already a public CVS repository for hobbit on SourceForge, but it only includes the hobbit-client code A public repository may encourage more contributed patches. I also see that last year you mentioned that you are "using RCS which is a predecessor to CVS". I don't know if this is still the case, but if so, it appears pretty simple to migrate to CVS using rcs2cvs as documented here: http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/CVS-RCS-HOWTO-3.html Or as the OP did in http://www.nabble.com/RCS-to-svn-t792119.html - he migrated RCS to SVN via CVS. Many thanks, Sebastian henrik (at) hswn.dk (Henrik Stoerner) wrote on Sun, 22 Jul 2007 00:08:12 +0200: >In another thread, someone asked about what new features are planned for >version 4.3.0. I've summarized them below; they have all been >implemented by now. Some of them have been contributed by others over >the past year - I'm pleased to have finally gotten their patches merged. > >There are some open bug-reports, and the plan now is to try and get >those fixed. Once that is done I'll ask you all to start testing the >beta-versions, and then a new release is hopefully available soon. > >This doesn't mean that I won't consider adding new stuff before the >4.3.0 release, but right now the plan is to get 4.3.0 shipped with >the current set of features. But if I've missed someone's favourite >patch or feature request, do let me know. > > >Major new features >------------------ >* PAGE setting for alert- and client-configuration handles hosts on > multiple pages, so any pagename can be used. >* Flap detection of statuses that change color rapidly. The status > is kept at the most critical level until it stops flapping. >* Holiday support for alerts, including variable holidays (Easter etc) >* Split NCV support - graph data from NCV can be split into multiple > RRD databases allowing for varying number of datasets. >* RRD database parameters are now configurable (i.e. number of > datapoints stored, whether to store min/max values etc). Note that > this only applies to newly created RRD files, not existing ones. >* Distributed worker modules allow sharing the load across multiple > Hobbit servers >* RRD updates are now cached for up to 30 minutes before being written > to disk. This makes the I/O load on large installations much lighter. >* Detection of statuses that are reported by multiple hosts >* Client backend-support for the z/OS and z/VSE clients by Rich Smirna > >Display things >-------------- >* Graph zooming now limits the lower/upper bounds of a graph (requires > rrdtool 1.2.x) >* The trends page default data-period can be configured to something > other than the default 48-hour view, and the user can select a > different period on-the-fly. >* Hosts can be sorted automatically on the overview webpage with a > "group-sorted" group definition. >* NOCOLUMNS setting in bb-hosts let you suppress certain columns on > a per-host basis >* Host-comments are displayed as tool-tips, to save screen space. > >Checks and graphs >----------------- >* Network tests can use a specific source IP instead of the default >* The validity-period of network tests is configurable, instead of > being fixed at the default 30-minute setting >* Client file checks can check for a symlink >* "trends" report for RRD handling allows generating custom-made > RRD files >* Hobbit host- and status-counts are tracked in an RRD file > >Miscellaneous >------------- >* NCV reports can handle color-icons before the name:value data >* hobbitlaunch tasks can be configured to run on certain hosts only >* Time-warp detection and warning >* Local unix-socket interface to Hobbit daemon >* hobbitd_capture can collect several statuses and hand off such a > batch to an external command >* Support for SHA-224/256/384/512 digests > > >Regards, >Henrik

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[hobbit] Sending alerts to remote system running qpage
by Keller_Liora＠emc.com 01 Dec '07

01 Dec '07

We are using qpage to page on cell phones, we don't use email-sms. On BB we configured "QPAGEARGS" and set the remote hostname.

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Sending alerts to remote system running qpage
by Keller_Liora＠emc.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Hi, We are moving from BB to Hobbit. We are using qpage to send out pages from BB to a remote system which is running qpage. We would like to keep the qpage and modem on the same server, but the Hobbit server is running on a different system. Any idea how we can send alerts from Hobbit to a remote qpage server? Thanks, Liora

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Strange pinging issue
by shawn.maschino＠sabic-ip.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Hi all, we are seeing a strange fping issue with Hobbit and I was wondering if anyone may have seen the same. We have changed the IP addresses on a large number of systems we are monitoring due to moving them to a new location. We updated the bb-hosts file to have the new IPs, and DNS was also updated. However Hobbit occasionally falls back to testing the old IP for no apparent reason. This happens quite regularly as well, as seen here: Fri Nov 30 10:56:08 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:56:08_2007> 0:04:19 Fri Nov 30 10:48:31 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:48:31_2007> 0:07:37 Fri Nov 30 10:48:08 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:48:08_2007> 0:00:23 Fri Nov 30 10:42:27 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:42:27_2007> 0:05:41 Fri Nov 30 10:39:53 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:39:53_2007> 0:02:34 Fri Nov 30 10:36:49 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:36:49_2007> 0:03:04 Fri Nov 30 10:31:57 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:31:57_2007> 0:04:52 Fri Nov 30 10:25:27 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:25:27_2007> 0:06:30 Fri Nov 30 10:23:58 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:23:58_2007> 0:01:29 Fri Nov 30 10:19:19 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:19:19_2007> 0:04:39 Fri Nov 30 10:16:26 2007 <http://lacin002v.gep.ge.com/cgi-bin/bb-histlog.sh?HOST=SACIN053V&SERVIC E=conn&TIMEBUF=Fri_Nov_30_10:16:26_2007> 0:02:53 The conn status page when green shows the correct IP address, and when red shows the wrong (old) IP address. Nothing in the bb-hosts or DNS change during this time. I ran a "fping -AeC 1000 -i 5000 <host>" from the command line to see if fping was switching IPs, and it does not seem to be, even when Hobbit shows red, the fping from the command line still his the new/current IP. I've tried forcing a "testip" in bb-hosts to see if DNS was involved, and with that forced it still changes in Hobbit. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks, Shawn

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Monitoring HP StorageWorks EVA disk array
by robert.herron＠gmail.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

I checked Deadcat.net and didn't find anything. Does anyone have a script to monitor a HP StorageWorks EVA disk array with Hobbit? Just checking before I start working on it myself. Thanks. -- Robert Herron robert.herron at gmail.com

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security hole? server masquerade
by yf.liang＠yahoo.ca 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

We have 2 servers: 1.2.3.4 servera 4.5.6.8 serverb During DR(discovery test), we changed the local name of serverb to servera, to perform test to see that servera applications have been recovered. So, externally both return pings to their original name. However, when logging into serverb, the uname -a returns servera. The change was done by changing /etc/hosts and uname. 4.5.6.8 serverb servera When the hobbit client is running on serverb, all processes have servera in them. Hobbit server starts to report serverb status as servera !! Doesn't the hobbit server check that the ip of the reporting server (serverb) and reject it, since it does not match the ip address of servera? --------------------------------- Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail

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CPU Utilization, Not Good
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Hi, I've asked this several times, but I really have not received a good answer. Hobbit doesn't really seem to monitor cpu utilization correctly. For example, I can look at the load, login to the box, and then run top. Top shows that cpu utilization is at 100%, 0% idle time. However, the "trends" utilization graph shows 20% cpu utilization. Can someone tell me why? Thanks..James James Wade

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sar and hobbit
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 30 Nov '07

30 Nov '07

Has anyone gotten sar working with hobbit? Thanks.James James Wade

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