January 2008 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

Monitoring IMG1010 Media Gateway from Cantata
by Ken.Cooper＠Intelliverse.com 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

Hey Everybody, I have another challenge/problem. My company is installing a Cantata IMG1010 Media Gateway with an EMS server that will require me to monitor them with Hobbit. The EMS server is not a problem, it has Linux OS and I am already monitoring a number of this type server. I am told the IMG1010 has it own brand of OS, and I have no idea how to hook to it. Anybody done this before?? Thanks in advance for your help. Ken Cooper Ken Cooper Sr. NOC Technician Phone|770.663.5079 ken.cooper at intelliverse.com <mailto:ken.cooper at intelliverse.com>

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Hobbit Cluster
by Detlef.Stracke＠mobilcom.de 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

Hi All, we have two Solaris 10 Server in a Veritas-Cluster (active/passive) with a virtuell IP. The Data-Directory is on a NFS-Mount. If we change the active server, then all disabled services are enabled. Furthermore all test, their are not running every 5min, are purple. Thanks for help.

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ext scripts & the Hobbit methodology for implementation.
by s_aiello＠comcast.net 24 Jan '08

24 Jan '08

Within the last few months I have successfully migrated from BigBrother to Hobbit. The process was long and auderous since we had a large number of customizations in BigBrother. But now that we are on Hobbit, I really want to make use of the power of Hobbit and move away from the BB legacy method for ext scripts. What I mean by BB legacy ext scripts, are client based ext scripts that send reports in via the bb status command. The Hobbit method is more server centric. In that clients report raw data to the server and the server processes that data, applying thresholds, formating reports, and possibly trending. Now to send raw data from the client there are two choices, data or client. Now in the past, I believe I saw a thread where Henrik mentioned that data was the preferred method for ext scripts & that client was more for the internal use between hobbit clients & server. But the lure of the client command is to great to ignore. Especially with the ability to access that raw data via the clientlog command. So that brings me to my first problem when sending data via the client command the data needs to be structure in a very particular format. Where OSTYPE has to match a predefined Hobbit OSTYPE and a minimum set of SECTIONNAME need to be filled for the Hobbit server to accept the data. If they are missing the data just ends up in /dev/null. So I was curious if in the upcoming 4.3 (or newer version), that the client command could be opened up for more general usage ? Now secondly after the data is actually accepted by the Server, the ability to do something with it is needed. Now that shouldn't be a problem with being able to attatch a script to a Hobbit channel or by scheduling a command to run clientlog every X minutes and process the data. But how does the script apply thresholds ? Now I am working under the assumption that for my custom data I would be able to add custom definitions to the hobbit-clients.cfg file. But how does my script access those thresholds ? Since Hobbit already has all the internals to acess this file, I would think that a Hobbit utility would fit the need. Maybe even a new BB command ? i.e. "bin/bb 1.2.3.4 "threshold server", where there could be an optional parameter "stats=" which could be CPU, PROCS, DISK, etc. By storing the custom ext thresholds in the hobbit-clients.cfg file, this allows the cgi hobbit-confreport.sh to report on the custom thresholds along with the built-in client thresholds. A sample of a custom client report: bin/bb 1.2.3.4 "client BlahJVM01.websphere was60 [date] Thu Jan 24 09:03...... [jvm] java version: JDK 1.4.2_12 .... [memory] free: 88565 used: 43209 gc-calls: 39 gc-time: 4 [threadpool] current: 0 highwater: 10 active: 0 " Sample hobbit-clients.cfg WASTHRD 10 20 WASMEMFREE 15000 5000 Sorry for the long winded email, I am just trying to move my ext scripts to the Hobbit methodology. It just makes more sense.. and offers many more options & power. And this was just my take on it. Thoughts ? ~Steve

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[hobbit] Tracking Users -- Ideas
by Martin.Ward＠colt.net 24 Jan '08

24 Jan '08

Hi James, Tracking users of a website is a little tricky unless you actually have them logging in and out. Most websites are not stateful, which is to say you do not have the concept of a user being logged in; the user connects, downloads a webpage from your site and disconnects. Your example: > The log-file looks like this: > 192.168.0.22 - user07 [20/Aug/2007:08:49:49 -0500] "GET /htdocs/info/wd.html shows a user ID so presumably you have some kind of authentication, but do you have a "logoff" button and are your users forced to use it? Or can they simply authenticate, download the data and then close their web browser? > So, it shows all the web pages the user accesses. What I really want to know > is how many users are currently connecting through to the web-site. How can you define "Currently"? If you mean "How many people are currently download webpages from my website and if you are running a unix machines then you can use the "netstat -an" command and find all connections that are connected to your local port 80 (or whichever port your web server runs on). |\/|artin ************************************************************************************* The message is intended for the named addressee only and may not be disclosed to or used by anyone else, nor may it be copied in any way. The contents of this message and its attachments are confidential and may also be subject to legal privilege. If you are not the named addressee and/or have received this message in error, please advise us by e-mailing security at colt.net and delete the message and any attachments without retaining any copies. Internet communications are not secure and COLT does not accept responsibility for this message, its contents nor responsibility for any viruses. No contracts can be created or varied on behalf of COLT Telecommunications, its subsidiaries or affiliates ("COLT") and any other party by email Communications unless expressly agreed in writing with such other party. Please note that incoming emails will be automatically scanned to eliminate potential viruses and unsolicited promotional emails. For more information refer to www.colt.net or contact us on +44(0)20 7390 3900.

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Tracking Users -- Ideas
by jkwade＠futurefrontiers.com 24 Jan '08

24 Jan '08

Hello All, I'd like to be able to graph the number of users connecting to a web-site. I was wondering if any one had any good ideas or if something had already been written. Basically, I want to track the number of users connecting to a web-site by looking at the log-file, and I'd like to graph it. The log-file looks like this: 192.168.0.22 - user07 [20/Aug/2007:08:49:49 -0500] "GET /htdocs/info/wd.html So, it shows all the web pages the user accesses. What I really want to know is how many users are currently connecting through to the web-site. I could cat the log file out every minute, grab the username, do a sort unique based on the IP address and Username, then do a count, and graph it. But I don't know that it would be very accurate. The logfile rotates every 2mb, so I'd have to do a grep of all the files based on date and time, then do a sort on IP address and Username. I also want to put some checks in, for example, same username with more than one IP address, reverse lookup of the IP based on location, ie..our users should only be in the U.S., and not somewhere else. Any suggestions? Thanks.James

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BB vs Hobbit: How to get rid of displaying the ps output?
by beckert＠phys.ethz.ch 24 Jan '08

24 Jan '08

Hi, Found hobbit recently via its new Debian package[1]. [1] http://packages.debian.org/hobbit At work we're monitoring nearly 500 machines with BB. The BB server is due to being replaced with a fresh setup on new hardware, not only because of performance problems. So the Debian hobbit package just came right and we would like to switch from BB to hobbit because of performance _and_ features. :-) Several of us are currently playing around with hobbit on our private servers. We especially love the apt and libs plugins. :-) Now, after a week or two of using and exploring hobbit we noticed a few things we liked better with BB. We were able to fix most of them ourselves via templates and config files. But there is one thing we wonder if it is configurable or a hardcoded features in hobbit. We looked through the docs (web pages as well as man pages), but didn't find a hint on this questions yet, so I thought, I'll try the list. (The list archive didn't bring up anything helpful yet. :-) So here's the question: Is there a possibility to _not_ show the whole ps output in the procs details CGI? BB only showed the monitored processes. With hobbit this page shows the whole ps output. IMHO this is a privacy issue -- even with a passowrd protection for the CGI scripts -- since the output may get saved permanently in the history. (I do not want to think about what happens if the locally configured password protection is found to not working correctly in a complex enterprise setup...) In my personal case, the hobbit server runs on a server I share with friends. Although I do trust them regarding the server, there's no need for them being able to monitor e.g. which MP3s I'm listening to at home or which games I play on the laptop. On dialup machines I just can switch off the hobbit client while gaming or listening MP3s, but that's no real solution. On the job it's approximately the same problem, just in a bigger scale. We monitor a few hundred managed workstations with BB, but we don't want to keep the old BB client just because of this privacy issue, especially since the hobbit client would gives us a lot of advantages. Thanks in advance for any hints on these issues. P.S.: We're running the 4.2.0 version of hobbit as packaged by Debian respectively Backports.org. Kind regards, Axel Beckert -- Axel Beckert <beckert at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +41 44 633 1239 CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/

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LDAP warning during configure on latest snapshot
by tomg＠mcclatchyinteractive.com 23 Jan '08

23 Jan '08

I'm seeing this error during the LDAP section of ./configure on all of the latest snapshots, including todays. My hobbit server is running RHEL5 and I've got all of the latest errata RPMs applied. <snip> Checking for LDAP ... test-ldap.c: In function ‘main’: test-ldap.c:16: warning: implicit declaration of function ‘ldap_init’ test-ldap.c:16: warning: assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast Found LDAP include files in /usr/include Found LDAP libraries in /usr/lib Hobbit can use your OpenLDAP LDAP client library to test LDAP servers. <snip> I don't have LDAP on my network so I can't verify whether or not this affects the Hobbit tests, but I wanted to share it just in case. Tom

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allinone and other patch on Debian?
by mike.calvey＠anite.com 23 Jan '08

23 Jan '08

I want to install the hobbit_perl_client.patch and have to install the allinone patch first. The instructions for the allinone patch require the Hobbit 4.2.0 source. I have downloaded and tested the patch installs on the source but my Hobbit Server is a Debian distro and hobbit is installed using dpkg (and no source directory starting hobbit-4.2.0). How do I apply the allinone patch (and hence the hobbit_perl_client.patch) to a Hobbit 4.2.0 Server installed with dpkg? Mike. Please refer to www.anite.com for individual Anite company details. The contents of this e-mail and any attachments are for the intended recipient only. If you are not the intended recipient, you are not authorised to and must not disclose, copy, distribute, or retain this message or any part of it. It may contain information which is confidential and/or covered by legal professional or other privilege. Contracts cannot be concluded with us nor legal service effected by email. Anite plc Registered in England No.1798114 Registered Office: 353 Buckingham Avenue Slough Berks SL1 4PF United Kingdom VAT Registration No. GB 787 418187 Scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl.

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[hobbit] esxtop
by Thomas.Kern＠hq.doe.gov 23 Jan '08

23 Jan '08

Perhaps the memory portion of the esxtop output is not quite in the format that the hobbit backend understands. If you have access to a system and a top command that hobbit does understand, compare the output formats. If you can figure out a difference between them, you mighjt be able to code a sed filter to normalize the esxtop format data before passing it on to hobbit. Thomas Kern 301-903-2211 ----- Original Message ----- From: Ryan Sclanders <merlin_rbs at hotmail.com> To: hobbit at hswn.dk <hobbit at hswn.dk> Sent: Wed Jan 23 05:03:59 2008 Subject: [hobbit] esxtop Hi All, Was hoping someone could help me or at least steer me in the right direction when monitoring "memory usage" on an esx server. I have searched the web and newgroups only to find people talking about using esxtop and changing the hobbitclient-linux.sh script, when monitoring load and CPU. Unfortunately when changing the startup script to use esxtop the memory monitor column fails. I considered writing a basic script to monitor the memory (example below), but am not sure how I would create the graphs to trend the mem usage. ################### #!/bin/sh COLUMN=mem COLOR=green cat /proc/vmware/mem |grep "Machine memory free" > /tmp/meminfo.txt $BB $BBDISP "status $MACHINE.$COLUMN $COLOR `date` `cat /tmp/meminfo.txt` " exit 0 ################### Does anyone have any better ideas or are doing anything different that could help resolve this dilemma? Thanks in advance, Ryan _________________________________________________________________ Who's friends with who and co-starred in what? http://www.searchgamesbox.com/celebrityseparation.shtml

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esxtop
by merlin_rbs＠hotmail.com 23 Jan '08

23 Jan '08

Hi All, Was hoping someone could help me or at least steer me in the right direction when monitoring "memory usage" on an esx server. I have searched the web and newgroups only to find people talking about using esxtop and changing the hobbitclient-linux.sh script, when monitoring load and CPU. Unfortunately when changing the startup script to use esxtop the memory monitor column fails. I considered writing a basic script to monitor the memory (example below), but am not sure how I would create the graphs to trend the mem usage. ################### #!/bin/sh COLUMN=mem COLOR=green cat /proc/vmware/mem |grep "Machine memory free" > /tmp/meminfo.txt $BB $BBDISP "status $MACHINE.$COLUMN $COLOR `date` `cat /tmp/meminfo.txt` " exit 0 ################### Does anyone have any better ideas or are doing anything different that could help resolve this dilemma? Thanks in advance, Ryan _________________________________________________________________ Who's friends with who and co-starred in what? http://www.searchgamesbox.com/celebrityseparation.shtml

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