June 2012 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

holiday as planned downtime
by Jurgen.Claessens＠cegeka.be 11 Dec '12

11 Dec '12

Hey all, I'm running xymon 4.3.7 and I have been trying to find a way so that the holidays are being showed as what would be the same for the alerting. For me this would mean that if it's a holiday they would show as planned downtime and not show up in the allnongreen window. The alerting itself works without problems, but I cannot find a way for the planned downtime act the same way. Can anyone point me in the right direction? This e-mail and all files transmitted as attachment(s) thereto are confidential and solely intended for the individual to whom or the organization to which they are addressed. If you received this e-mail by mistake, please notify Cegeka's Service Desk at cegeka.support at cegeka.be or call +32 (0)11 240 363. We thank you in advance. Cegeka hereby confirms that this message has been swept by Sophos for the presence of viruses.

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diskstat.sh/RRD oddity
by sholmes42＠mac.com 18 Oct '12

18 Oct '12

This is just a comment on an oddity with respect to diskstat.sh and RRD. We make pretty heavy use of the diskstat.sh script, which I believe I downloaded from xymonton. When I installed it I used the standard clientlaunch.cfg stanza for the configuration and everything worked great. I was called to task today because we have been having some disk io issues on the RHEL VMs and someone was looking at the trend graphs for some servers to see if there was anything they could learn and they noticed that beginning at about 4pm local time on Monday the graphs for the number of sectors written per second on a couple of file systems on several VMs jumped from the 10 to 20 range to the 300 to 340 range and stayed there. The graph for number of disk writes per second had a corresponding jump up to about 40 or 50 from close to zero. In analyzing the data I discovered that the file system that was displaying this behavior is the same file system to which the diskstat.sh script is writing its temp files. It appears that for some reason, starting at 4pm on Monday the 5 minute test interval and the 5 minute average for RRD got in sync and all it was seeing was the data point that corresponded to its own writing activity and RRD was using it for the entire 5 minute average (of course, that's what RRD does). I 'fixed' it by changing the test interval to something less than 5 minutes. I tried 2, 3, and 4 minutes and they all had the effect of reducing the data in the plot back to the expected level, i.e. to the level it was before 4pm on Monday. The mystery remains why it suddenly started seeing and using its own disk activity at the same time on several different servers. Steve Holmes ITaP/Purdue University -- If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. -Juan Ramon Jimenez, poet, Nobel Prize in literature (1881-1958) I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs. -Frederick Douglass, Former slave, abolitionist, editor, and orator (1817-1895)

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Event History
by kconnell＠ryerson.ca 04 Oct '12

04 Oct '12

I built a new Xymon server this week with v4.3.7 and all looks good. Can I copy event history from my current Xymon/Hobbit v4.2.2 server to the new ? I did try copying files/directories over from /xymon/data/<hist>&<histlogs>, but that didn't seem to work... Ken Connell Intermediate Network Engineer Computer & Communication Services Ryerson University 350 Victoria St RM AB50 Toronto, Ont M5B 2K3 416-979-5000 x6709

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Question on df processing for xymonclient-linux.sh
by Mark.Deiss＠acs-inc.com 04 Sep '12

04 Sep '12

In looking df processing in the Linux Xymon client module in client/xymonclient-linux.sh: echo "[df]" EXCLUDES=`cat /proc/filesystems | grep nodev | awk '{print $2}' | xargs echo | sed -e 's! ! -x !g'` df -Pl -x iso9660 -x $EXCLUDES | sed -e '/^[^ ][^ ]*$/{ N s/[ ]*\n[ ]*/ / }' A bit concerned that the df line can have a dangling "-x" option if the EXCLUDES variable is not populated. With a dangling "-x", the df command will abort with a syntax error and the df status will probably end up with a green status with no rrd history being populated. Users would not be aware unless they specifically brought up the green disk display or were reviewing disk trends and noticing the gap. The EXCLUDES variable can become null if the xymon client account loses read access to /proc/filesystems, for some reason the Linux flavor quit using the nodev tag (maybe started using NODEV or Nodev after a patch update....) or the xymon client went onto an (older) Linux version that did not use the /proc system. Suggest a revision either using sed or awk to build the EXCLUDES variable and a modification of the df command to eliminate the dangling "-x" option EXCLUDES=`cat /proc/filesystems 2>/dev/null | awk ' $1 ~ /nodev/ { printf("-x %s ", $2) }'` Or EXCLUDES=`cat /proc/filesystems 2>/dev/null | sed -ne ' /nodev/{ s/nodev[ ]*/ -x / H } ${ x s/\n//g p }'` df -Pl -x iso9660 $EXCLUDES 2>/dev/null | sed -e '/^[^ ][^ ]*$/{ N s/[ ]*\n[ ]*/ / }' If the parsing for nondev entries in /proc/filesystems now blows up for whatever reason (EXCLUDES is null), the df command will be capturing more than is desired which I believe would be preferred over missing the important file systems. Would like to use "2>&1" rather than "2>/dev/null" in the df line except any captured error lines may cause some downstream havoc with the rrd database processing.

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Xymon Monitor for Vmware ESXi
by gudm00＠gmail.com 02 Aug '12

02 Aug '12

Well there is a new version online now which includes Stevens changes. I've also updated the SVN with the code so that is online now. regards Gudmo > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Svenni > Sent: 02/18/12 06:25 PM > To: xymon > Subject: Re: [Xymon] Xymon Monitor for Vmware ESXi > > Thanks Steve. > > I hope submitting patches can be made easier through SourceForge in > the future. But I will let my college Gudmo decide how he goes about > this since he is the one currently developing and maintaining the script. > > Until then post patches here or send directly to me or Gudmo. It would be good if you could use SourceForge's subversion too. Regards, Malcolm -- BBWin Development - The Windows client for Big Brother and Xymon http://bbwin.sourceforge.net http://xymon.sourceforge.net _______________________________________________ Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon

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xymond_alert / alerts.cfg duration bugs or documentation issues
by spah＠syntec.co.uk 31 Jul '12

31 Jul '12

2 possible bugs or documentation errors... Summary: 1. xymond_alert interprets duration as minutes although the documentation says it is specified as seconds. 2. > is interpreted as >= (greater than or equal to) instead of > (greater than) in alerts.cfg. Version affected: 4.3.7 Steps to reproduce: alerts.cfg: HOST=CS1 MAIL $pg-sebsms SERVICE=svcs COLOR=red DURATION>10m REPEAT=30 RECOVERED Also tried without the the m for minutes, as this is supposed to be the default. /home/hobbit/server/bin/xymond_alert --test CS1 svcs --color=red --duration=11 | grep Mail 00009396 2012-05-28 14:09:46 Mail alert with command '/var/spool/mail/root "Xymon [12345] CS1:svcs CRITICAL (RED)" <mailto:syntecseb at sms2email.com'> <email address removed>' <mailto:syntecseb at sms2email.com'> /home/hobbit/server/bin/xymond_alert --test CS1 svcs --color=red --duration=10 | grep Mail 00009483 2012-05-28 14:09:50 Mail alert with command '/var/spool/mail/root "Xymon [12345] CS1:svcs CRITICAL (RED)" <mailto:syntecseb at sms2email.com'> <email address removed>' <mailto:syntecseb at sms2email.com'> /home/hobbit/server/bin/xymond_alert --test CS1 svcs --color=red --duration=9 | grep Mail <nothing> But man xymond_alert says: --duration=SECONDS The SECONDS parameter is the duration of the alert in seconds. However, as you can see above, the xymond_alert parameter is behaving as if it was in minutes (or the alerts.cfg rule is behaving as if it was in seconds). And the > is behaving as if it were >=. Expected behaviour: 1. xymond_alert interprets duration as seconds. 2. > is interpreted as > (greater than) in alerts.cfg. Other Suggestion: alerts.cfg should accept durations specified in seconds (with an s suffix) so that alert parameters can be more accurately defined as some tests or status changes may be occurring more often than once a minute. Kind regards, SebA

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upgrade to new server
by poppy.ben＠marshfieldclinic.org 14 Jul '12

14 Jul '12

I see that upgrade steps are pretty well documented for moving from BB to xymon, and even upgrading from hobbit 4.2 to 4.3x on the same server. I am looking at upgrading both my server and my install of xymon to a new server (this is for my remaining monitoring server in another network location). So I wanted to be sure I am reading this correctly. I am moving from Centos 5 to Centos 6. Moving from Hobbit 4.2 to Xymon 4.3.7 (plus dnstimeout.patch). I will copy manually the bb-hosts contents to hosts.cfg. The rest of the configs are pretty standard default installation stuff, and I will modify as needed those config files. What I'm most concerned with is the historical data. I see that the build/upgrade430.sh script basically renames files, but nothing to do with stuff in data/hist, data/histlogs, and rrd files. Am I going to be ok with simply rsyncing those files over to the new server? Is there anything else I should be thinking about before making this move? Thanks, -Ben ______________________________________________________________________ The contents of this message may contain private, protected and/or privileged information. If you received this message in error, you should destroy the e-mail message and any attachments or copies, and you are prohibited from retaining, distributing, disclosing or using any information contained within. Please contact the sender and advise of the erroneous delivery by return e-mail or telephone. Thank you for your cooperation.

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white gaps in graphs across a number of services
by vincent.baines＠excelian.com 14 Jul '12

14 Jul '12

Hi Everyone, Have been looking on and off at a problem I've seen for a while now, without massive success. I see intermittant 'white gaps' occuring in xymon results across a number of services, and sometimes at corresponding times, but sometimes not. Most frequently I see this gap for CPU load, and this isn't just specific to one server. Attached is an example of useres and processes from one client server. There is a corresponding gap for the approx 3AM gap in CPU utilization graphs, memory graphs, actually, all of them I think, and a large 300second spike in clock offset at that time. But, nothing corresponding to the other gaps. If I look at the xymon server itself, it looks like there was something up at that time too, as xymond incoming messages drops to zero. But, for the rest of the day, it holds at a steady number. But, theres are gaps all over the place in xymonnet runtime, CPU utilization, users and procs, etc. I seem to recall we did try to tweak some rrd cache value as it cropped up in another post, which I think improved things slightly. But, we are having problems with the platforms that we're trying to monitor, with apparent long NFS pings between boxes. The xymon server itself is running on a VM box. Has anyone had issues running on VM? As best I can figure, either we have a xymon config issue, the xymon box itself isn't stable and it dropping data, or we have genuine network / disk write issues.. Any other thoughts? Cheers! The information contained in this email and any attached files is confidential and intended solely for the addressee(s). The email may be legally privileged or prohibited from disclosure and unauthorised use. If you are not the named addressee you may not use, copy, or disclose this information to any other person. If you received this message in error please notify the sender immediately and delete it from your system. Any opinion or views contained in this email message are those of the sender, and do not represent those of the Company in any way and reliance should not be placed upon its contents. Unless otherwise stated, this email message is not intended to be contractually binding. Where an Agreement exists between our respective companies and there is conflict between the contents of this email message and the Agreement then the terms of that Agreement shall prevail. Excelian Limited 44 Featherstone Street London EC1Y 8RN Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 9595 www.Excelian.com _____________________________________________________________________ This e-mail has been scanned for viruses by MessageLabs. For further information visit http://www.messagelabs.com Excelian subscribes to cleaner and greener methods of working. Help take responsibility for the environment. Please don't print this email unless you absolutely have to.

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Hand editing config files
by henrik＠hswn.dk 14 Jul '12

14 Jul '12

Hi, in another mail thread, another monitoring tool (Zenoss) was mentioned which had the advantage of “no hand editing of config files”. Text based config files have their ups and downs - they are infinitely flexible and can adapt to all sorts of weird ways of defining your setup, but it is also easier to "get it wrong" and put something in there which doesn't work. Even happens to me occasionally. It's the age-old debate over whether something is "powerful" or "dangerous". I am currently working on the next Xymon version (except I've been swamped with for-pay work the past couple of months ... and a hefty round of lay-offs in other departments than mine). This involves a complete rewrite of the network testing tool, and for this rewrite I've started using an SQLite database for storing some intermediate data used by the network tester, instead of keeping it in a bunch of temporary text-files. And it has made me consider the idea of using a database for storing at least some of the configuration - first of all the hosts.cfg configuration of hosts, IP-adresses and network tests. This would make some things simpler, others a bit more complex - "xymongrep", for instance - but would also make it a lot easier to provide a GUI for managing what hosts are being monitored. This is not going to happen anytime soon, but since the subject was up in the air - what do you think about it ? Is it a major problem that Xymon has all configuration in text files ? How many of you auto-generate the Xymon config by extracting the information from a database already ? Just looking for some feedback... Regards, Henrik

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content test
by lebarber＠gmail.com 10 Jul '12

10 Jul '12

I'm trying to do a content check, but all I'm seeing under the "content" column is: No output received from server The http test associated with the content check is working correctly, the http headers are being returned. I can retrieve the page using wget from the same server that I'm running the content test on. I've tried changing the user-agent. I even set the user-agent to "Xymon" with wget and was able to retrieve the page. Anybody have any idea what is going one here? Thanks, Larry Barber

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