January 2008 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

Question on Graphing - -Custom Graph
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

Hello, I have a question on custom graphing. When I first did my NCV graph, I had some extra text at the top and it tried to build the rrd database with that. I removed the text and the rrd database was created correctly, and I'm now graphing just fine. However, I want to add additional text in the window with my custom graph. example: Users : 11 Unauth : 4 Attempts : 13 Total : 486 Instead I want this: Number of Users connecting. Users : 11 Number of Unauthorized connections. Unauth : 4 Will it work if I do it like this? If not, what's the best way, put the descriptions at the bottom? Thanks.James

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Solved: [hobbit] Help Getting Custom Graph Working
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

Never mind, I finally got it. In my script I had: LINE="status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` `cat $CHKLOG`" I changed it to: LINE="status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date` `cat $REQLOG` " It must need to see a newline at the end... James _____ From: James Wade [mailto:jkwade at futurefrontiers.com] Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 2:48 PM To: hobbit at hswn.dk Subject: [hobbit] Help Getting Custom Graph Working I seem to be having a problem getting a custom graph to work. I've gotten it working in the past, but I'm having problems. I'm sending four values via a test. When I do a rrdump, it shows only three of the values. The fourth value doesn't show up. If I rotate the third with the fourth value, ie..re-order them, the other value shows up. example: Users : 11 Unauth : 4 Attempts : 13 Total : 486 So,Total doesn't show up, but if I rotate total with Attempts, and remove the login.rrd file, then Attempts doesn't show up. Here's what my hobbitserver.cfg file looks like: NCV_login="Users:GAUGE,Unauth:GAUGE,Attempts:GAUGE,Total:GAUGE" Thanks.James

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How long should a LOG status be red?
by mndud3＠gmail.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

Hello, I have clientlocal.cfg configured to collect the log messages I need. I have hobbit-clientts.cfg configured to watch for the specific messages I need. One question I have: how long will the status stay RED by default? A couple tests seems to show that the duration of the red status will vary. Some will stay red for just 10 minutes, others stay that way for more than 30 minutes. I can write a special rule to handle LOG alerts, but I'd rather not have to and if I understood why the duration of the red status seems to be variable, perhaps I don't have to. -Bill.

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Script to update static critical systems view
by bgmilne＠staff.telkomsa.net 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

I hope to migrate to using the critical systems view by default, but since our Hobbit installation is monitored by people in different groups of our enterprise, habits change slowly. At the same time we will make some URL changes, so I will be able to redirect them, but I would prefer if the index page showed the right view. I don't see how I could use the /cgi-bin/hobbit-nkview.sh as the index page, so I did this quick script to generate bbcritical.html for me (which I can symlink or set as the first file name in the DirectoryIndex option). See attachment. Regards, Buchan

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Future of Hobbit - Getting added to distro repos
by jonescr＠cisco.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

I am going to attempt to drive getting Hobbit added to the Centos Plus repository, but first we need to figure out a few things: 1. Who will create and maintain the RPMs I'd rather someone with experience creating and maintaining distribution packages do this, but if all else fails I will volunteer. 2. Resolution of common problems when installing Hobbit on RHEL/CentOS Here are problems I have encountered in the past: * SELINUX blocks access to hobbit cgi and web content (and probably the creation of suid hobbitping). So the RPM installer script needs to set the proper security context on the files. * librrdtool is not provided in the RHEL or CentOS/CentOS Plus repository (so even if you had a Hobbit RPM, you would have to go and get 3 rrdtool packages (rrdtool, rrdtool-devel, and perl-rrdtool) from the DAG repository. Possible resolution is to also get rrdtool added to CentOS Plus. 3. Figuring out what would be the most common/preferred/accepted installation dirs for Hobbit. Last week I installed the FC5 rpm, and it installed to /etc/hobbit, whereas the tarball by default installs to a subdirectory of /home. Some people like system tools to be in a "system" directory, while others like being able to install to a user space controlled location. Any other ideas? Am I leaving anything out? I'd really like to see Hobbit be an available package on "RedHat" (RHEL, CentOS), as well as Fedora. -Charles

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[hobbit] Future of Hobbit
by craig＠cookitservices.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

>This assumes you want to keep on using bb-hosts as the source of your >layout - I don't think that is a good idea. I would much rather have all >of the webpage layout stuff moved somewhere separate, so you can generate >multiple different sets of webpages from the same monitoring data. This sounds similar to what I did with BBConfigure (on deadcat). The main config file contains hosts, templates, etc. There is a separate text file that defines the web page layout (well actually the bb-hosts layout), it contains placeholders the generation script uses and fills in the hosts... (it generates the bb-hosts and other bb-* config files) I'll also vote to hold the master config data not in bb-hosts. Craig Cook

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Hobbit being taught in college syadmin courses!
by jonescr＠cisco.com 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

I'm happy to report that last week I was a guest speaker at MCC (Mesa Community College), located in Mesa, Arizona. The class was CIS240DL - Linux Network Administration. During the 4 hour class, I gave a complete presentation on Hobbit, and the instructor and I helped the students install their own Hobbit servers and configure them to monitor services both on the server and some remote clients. We had a couple of snags as all the workstations were CentOS, so we had to perform a few extra steps to get the prereqs, and battle SELinux :-) It seemed to go very well, and the students seemed impressed and pleased with Hobbit. I think I may have even converted one experienced student who seemed to prefer Zabbix :) The instructor seemed to enjoy the presentation as well, and it looks like I will also be invited to a repeat performance for the CIS238DL Linux System Administration class. He has also invited me to speak about Hobbit at the local LUG. So, just reporting that Hobbit is getting lots of exposure here in Arizona! _Henrik, I hope you don't mind, but for my presentation I used the slides you have up on your site as a framework_. I made sure to credit you as not only the main author of Hobbit but as the source of the slides :) I encourage others to evangelize Hobbit wherever they can. In my experience a lot of people have not heard of it, and once they see it they are like "wow" and want to start using it. The more the community grows, the better our chance of getting acceptance to the various distros, and more volunteers to help contribute code and ideas to help Henrik out. -Charles

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multiple apache instance trending question
by steve.e.mcconnell＠gsk.com 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

I have a new hobbit installation which is collecting and trending the apache status data correctly. For various reasons, I have about 7 separate apache instances on each server that I would like to trend individually as well. To accomplish this, I think that I would have to do the following in order to get hobbit (4.2.0) to trend this data: edit ~/bbnet/bbtest-net.c and copy the apache section (lines 601-637) the requisite number of times changing the subsequent apache references to something like 2apache, then 3apache, etc. Modify the ~/hobbitd/rrd/do_apache.c file basically copying the entire thing starting at line 13 (int do_apache_rrd(char *hostname, char *testname, char *msg, time_t tstamp) but changing each instance of apache to 2apache, then 3apache, etc. Then recompile and redeploy. After redeploying, I would also need to modify hobbitgraph.cfg copying the apache section and modifying with 2apache, 3apache, etc for the name of the graph as well as the rrd files. At this point, I think I should point out that I don't program in C (many would say in any other language either.) Is there anything else that I am missing? and am I making this too hard? steve steve mcconnell gsk unix application hosting support 919-282-3052

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Memory Utilization, Actual is NaN
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Hello, I was just wondering about the Hobbit Memory Utilization graph. Actual and Swap show up great, but I'm getting "NaN" for all the actual graphs. I'm just wondering what Hobbit uses to pull the actual.rrd file. Thanks.James

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How to add a New Task and New Column
by arun.thangappandi＠ge.com 30 Jan '08

30 Jan '08

Hi, Please let me know how to add a new task or a new test and new column which defines the parameters that to monitored for that task. I tried by adding a new task by adding the needed entries in the hobbitlaunch.cfg .Please help me in the getting out this. Thanks & Regards, Arunkumar

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