February 2009 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

xymon RPMS for RHEL/Centos 3/4/5
by bgmilne＠staff.telkomsa.net 06 Mar '09

06 Mar '09

I got around to adding some migration support to xymon in the Mandriva packages, and it seems to work adequately for a relatively simple setup. So, I have (as usual) rebuilt the packages for RHEL/Centos. For now, they are in a separate repo, e.g.: http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages/rhel5/xymon/ http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages/rhel4/xymon/ http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages/rhel3/xymon/ SRPM is here: http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages/SRPMS/xymon/xymon-4.2.3-1.rhel5.src.rpm Please note that you may see a message about files being save as .rpmsave, you should copy those back before starting xymon after the upgrade. Also note that any extension scripts may not be migrated correctly (it's better to package them as well :-)). If you do upgrade from Hobbit to Xymon with these packages, please let me know of anything else that did not work correctly. If I get sufficient feedback, I will eventually move these packages to the hobbit repo (or, make them have the same content). Regards, Buchan P.S. I am taking a few days of paternity leave starting now ... but I will try and answer mail

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ncv/splitncv question(s)
by hobbit＠general-failure.com 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

Hi, After creating custom graphs with NCV for our san's storage processor load I wanted to graph the read & write iops of our san on a per-lun basis. I hoped it could be done kind of dynamic (like disk) with NCV but that seems impossible. My san management station is spitting out nice status messages (using bbwincmd) formatted like this: <hobbit_display> status san lun,<lun#> green <timestamp> ReadIOPS : <#oips> WriteIOPS : <#iops> which result in numerous new columns under 'san' like "lun,11" "lun,12" etc (used the ",<#>" format since the 'disk' rrd's seem to use it). I was hoping they would all be 'hidden' in one 'lun' column (like disk) but that was wishfull thinking. Any solution/fix for this is welcome. Clicking one of these columns does show the correct results however (...although no graph since it doesn't even make rrd's). After reading about SPLITNCV in http://www.hswn.dk/hobbiton/2008/10/msg00423.html I could put something like SPLITNCV_lun="ReadIOPS:GAUGE,WriteIOPS:GAUGE" in my hobbitserver.cfg but if I understand correctly this would result in 2 rrd files lun.ReadIOPS.rrd and lun.WriteIOPS.rrd and that's not what I'm looking for. I'm hoping someone here "had fun" with something like this before and is able to point me in the right direction since I'm at the point that my head is about to explode. Thanks in advance, Wally

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Xymon 4.3.0: Beta version available on Sourceforge
by henrik＠hswn.dk 04 Mar '09

04 Mar '09

So you didn't think I'd do two releases in one day, eh? I've uploaded the first beta version of xymon 4.3.0 to Sourceforge a few moments ago. If you have the time and a spare system to test it with, I'd appreciate any effort you can lend me in getting the bugs ironed out. You should be aware that there IS a lot of new stuff in this version, and I more or less expect it to crash spectacularly in your setup. So putting it on mission- critical systems could be seen as slightly dangerous. If you have looked at the "trunk" of the sourcecode repository, you will be familiar with the new stuff in this version. However if you compare it to what's in the current beta-release, you will notice that I have left out some of the more "dangerous" new components from this release. This was done to make testing a bit more manageable; I have a lot of new code for Xymon, and throwing all of it into one release would just wreak havoc on everyones systems. So instead I am preparing for a series of releases over the coming months, where new features will be introduced in a controlled fashion. But the current release is not void of new stuff. Far from it - here are the highlights of the 4.3.0 version: Core changes: * Hosts which appear on multiple pages in the web display can use any page they are on in the alerting rules and elsewhere. * Support for defining holidays as non-working days in alerts and SLA calculations. * Worker modules (RRD, client-data parsers etc) can operate on remote hosts from the hobbitd daemon, for load-sharing. * New API's for loadhosts and sendmessage, in preparation for the full 5.0 changes. * Always use getcurrenttime() instead of time(). * Various bugfixes collected over time. Network test changes: * Merged new network tests from trunk: SOAP-over-HTTP, SSL minimum cipher strength * Changed network test code to always report a validity period for network tests, so it it possible to run network tests less often than every 30 minutes (e.g. once an hour). * Make the content-type setting in HTTP POST tests configurable. * Make the source-address used for TCP tests configurable. * Make the acceptable HTTP result codes configurable. * Use and save HTTP session cookies. Web changes * "NOCOLUMNS" changed to work for all columns. * New "group-sorted" definition to auto-sort hosts in a group * Use browser tooltips for host comments * "Compact" status allows several statuses to appear as a single status on the overview webpages. * Trends page can select the time period to show. Buttons provided for the common selections. * Ghost list report now lists possible candidates for a ghost, based on IP-address or unqualified hostname. * Support generic drop-down lists in templates. Report changes * Number of outages as SLA parameter Miscellaneous * hobbitlaunch support for running tasks only on certain hosts, and for a maximum time. * Alert script get a unique ID for each alert. The plan for the future is to let this release stabilize for a month or so, depending on how many bugs show up. Then I'll introduce new releases about once every two months - with the following schedule (everything subject to change): Version 4.4: * SNMP support for data collection * Status updates based on data collected in the RRD files (this is really nice - essentially, *any* value you put into an RRD file can trigger a new or modified status in Xymon. So you could eg. change the status of your "http" test to go red, if the response time of a webpage exceeds 5 seconds). * Status "flap" handling, to catch statuses that change rapidly. Version 4.5: * Support for communication between clients and Xymon to use compression and/or encryption. * Support for client authentication via SSL certificates (so you cannot spoof a client message). Version 4.6: * Revised web interface - eliminate the need for webserver-based authentication, and provide more fine-grained authorization for the various Xymon components. * Per-user custom login pages, so the login will always show those systems that the user has responsibility for / is allowed to access. Somewhere along the road I will also introduce a new "ping" test daemon - I am getting to the point where ping'ing all hosts take longer than 5 minutes (I have a lot of hosts). So something needs to be done, and I think I know how to do it. Have fun! Henrik

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hobbitping latency reporting with multiple hosts
by nick.nauwelaerts＠thomsonreuters.com 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Hello, We are having some discrepancies with the latencies xymon reports in it's conn tests as opposed to what we were seeing in other monitoring programs. What we're seeing is that xymon reports a much higher latency for certain hosts than what we're used to. We are using hobbitping from xymon 4.2.2 on x64, novell suse linux enterprise server 10 sp2. We think we've tracked it down to the following: We are testing with 3 hosts: 194.109.6.92 - www.xs4all.nl 195.130.131.39 - www.telenet.be 212.27.48.10 - www.free.fr These are used as an example, but our real world tests with internal hosts show the same issue. Anyway, when we ping each of these hosts we don't see any issue: % ./hobbitping 194.109.6.92 194.109.6.92 is alive (6 ms) ./hobbitping 195.130.131.39 195.130.131.39 is alive (2 ms) % ./hobbitping 212.27.48.10 212.27.48.10 is alive (16 ms) However, as soon as we start combining hosts we see strange results: ./hobbitping 195.130.131.39 194.109.6.92 195.130.131.39 is alive (22 ms) 194.109.6.92 is alive (6 ms) ./hobbitping 195.130.131.39 194.109.6.92 212.27.48.10 195.130.131.39 is alive (44 ms) 194.109.6.92 is alive (22 ms) 212.27.48.10 is alive (16 ms) Even multiple tests on the same host show this: % ./hobbitping 195.130.131.39 195.130.131.39 195.130.131.39 195.130.131.39 is alive (44 ms) 195.130.131.39 is alive (22 ms) 195.130.131.39 is alive (2 ms) We've found a reference to someone who might have the same issue, but there wasn't any follow up to that: http://www.hswn.dk/hobbiton/2008/09/msg00188.html Is anyone else seeing this issue? thx // nick

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apache
by oyvind.bjorge＠telenor.com 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Hi all! I have just installed a xymon server, but don't get the apache config correct. I have added a directory and an alias in httpd.conf: Alias /xymon/ "/local/xymon/server/www" <Directory "/local/xymon/server/www"> Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Includes MultiViews Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ScriptAlias /xymon-cgi/ "/local/xymon/cgi-bin/" <directory "/local/xymon/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options ExecCGI Includes Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> At first I got error messages with no access towards http://myserver/xymon, but after adjusting filsystem rights I instead get a directory listing. Index of /xymon [ICO] Name Last modified Size Description [DIR] Parent Directory - [TXT] bb.html 27-Feb-2009 12:29 7.9K [TXT] bb2.html 27-Feb-2009 12:29 2.7K [TXT] bbnk.html 27-Feb-2009 12:29 2.2K [DIR] gifs/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] help/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] html/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [TXT] index.html 27-Feb-2009 12:29 7.9K [DIR] menu/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] notes/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] rep/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] snap/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - [DIR] wml/ 26-Jan-2009 16:28 - If I try to select index.html (or bb.html) or typing the filename in the url, I get an 404 error: Not Found The requested URL /xymon/index.html was not found on this server. Any suggestions? Øyvind

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Books about Hobbit
by ataudte＠temenos.com 03 Mar '09

03 Mar '09

Hello, I will start a project with Hobbit this year. Are there any Books about this tool or is the Man-Page the only reference? Regards, Andreas Taudte IT Services TEMENOS The Banking Software Company Hahnstrasse 31-35 60528 Frankfurt/Main T: +49 69 66537-224 F: +49 69 66537-113 E: ataudte at temenos.com <mailto:ataudte at temenos.com> www.temenos.com <http://www.temenos.com/> *************************************** ACTIS.BSP IT Services GmbH Hahnstrasse 31-35, 60528 Frankfurt/Main Handelsregister: HRA 46129 Frankfurt Geschäftsführer: Armin Holst *************************************** P Consider the environment. Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to. Disclaimer: If you have received this e-mail in error please notify the sender. Please note that any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TEMENOS. We recommend that you check this e-mail and any attachments against viruses. TEMENOS accepts no liability for any damage caused by any malicious code or virus transmitted by this e-mail.

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New Hobbit server install validation
by Rafal.Roginela＠AmeriCashLoans.net 02 Mar '09

02 Mar '09

Hi All, I have a 4.2 install of Hobbit up and running and I am very happy with it. It runs on an old Gateway workstation with a Celeron and 512MB and performs stellar! CentOs 5 nothing fancy. I was going to move it to a more recent piece of hardware a Dell OptiPlex 320, which at least it is under warranty. I had the Idea of running it as a Xen VM on a Debian host. Is this a bad idea? Clarification of purpose: I'm really not going to run anything else on the Xen except for this one VM and maybe and I mean maybe a test xymon VM directly replicated from the working production VM. This is to provide me with a quick failover ability of copying the image (from backup or if the HD is intact directly from there) to another Xen host and BLAMO xymon is running within minutes. Does this sound OK? Is there a better way to accomplish this? Thank you, Rafal Roginela Network Engineer AmeriCash Loans, LLC This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden.

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[hobbit] xymon RPMS for RHEL/Centos 3/4/5
by bgmilne＠staff.telkomsa.net 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

----- "Martin Flemming" <martin.flemming at desy.de> wrote: > Hi, Buchan ! > > Stupid question by me, > but how must i rebuild the srpm on ScientificLinux/RHEL, i've got this > error > > rpmbuild --rebuild xymon-4.2.3-1.rhel5.src.rpm > > sh: %{mdkversion}/10: syntax error: operand expected (error token is > "%{mdkversion}/10") > sh: %{mdkversion}/10: syntax error: operand expected (error token is > "%{mdkversion}/10") > Fehler: Fehlgeschlagene Paket-Abhängigkeiten: > fping wird benötigt von xymon-4.2.3-0.1.mdk.i386 > This is a by-product of me re-using the Mandriva source RPM (as I do for a lot of other packages), and relying on some Mandriva macros. > .. i know, a simple rpm-question :-( Grab this file, and drop it in /etc/rpm : http://staff.telkomsa.net/packages/SRPMS/openldap/macros.mdk4rh I'll add an error message to this effect (as I did on the OpenLDAP packages) on the next packages. Regards, Buchan

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[hobbit] HTTP response time test
by bgmilne＠staff.telkomsa.net 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

----- "Jason Hand" <jason at hands4christ.org> wrote: > I cannot find anything mentioning if Hobbit/Xymon can test how long an > > HTTP or HTTPS page takes to respond and alert on that. In other > words, if a site is in a hung state so that it still technically > "responds" but it takes 5 seconds for the page to respond how does > Hobbit/Xymon handle that? I want to make sure that if a site that we > > are monitoring takes longer than a couple of seconds to load we are > alerted, > > Do any of you do a test like that and how are you doing it? As far as I remember, the default http test (assuming you have provided the full url to the site you want to test) will go red if the server doesn't respond with an appropriate status code within the timeout (which defaults to 10s). If you need custom timeouts for different hosts, then you may need something more complex than that (although you should consult the documentation, see the coverage of the --timeout option in the bbtest-net man page). Regards, Buchan

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tftp monitor
by tleavitt＠unameits.com 27 Feb '09

27 Feb '09

Couldn't quickly find a FAQ on this, didn't see anything on deadcat.net either... I to monitor whether a TFTP server on the internal net here is up and running. What do I need to do to make this happen? Thomas

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