March 2013 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

"Blue" status doesn't stick using '*'?
by David.Mills＠ngc.com 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

All - For some reason many (all?) hosts are currently impervious to being disabled from the CLI if I use the "*" wildcard for the TESTNAME value. According to the xymon man page, I should be able "...To disable all tests for a host, use an asterisk "*" for TESTNAME." All tests for this host should go "blue" and stay in this state indefinitely (right?). However, I see this (timestamps in the prompts): 16:51:39 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server/bin/xymon $XYMON_server "disable twau009.* -1 " 16:52:16 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server/bin/xymon $XYMON_server "xymondboard host=twau009 fields=testname,color,disabletime" trends|green|0 info|green|0 memory|blue|-1 files|blue|-1 msgs|blue|-1 ports|blue|-1 procs|blue|-1 disk|blue|-1 cpu|blue|-1 prtdiag|blue|-1 nfs|blue|-1 raid|blue|-1 tm|blue|-1 conn|blue|-1 sar|blue|-1 iostat2|blue|-1 then, about one minute later, I see my first "rebel" test ("conn") flip itself back to non-disabled: 16:53:14 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server//bin/xymon $XYMON_server "xymondboard host=twau009 fields=testname,color,disabletime" | grep -v blue trends|green|0 info|green|0 conn|green|0 It takes about five-six minutes, but all eventually desert their "blue" status and return to green. On the other hand, naming tests explicitly like the following seems to do the job more permanently: 17:03:50 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server/bin/xymon $XYMON_server "disable twau009.msgs -1 " 17:05:22 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server/bin/xymon $XYMON_server "disable twau009.files -1 " 17:05:28 dwru002:/var/log/xymon> ~/xymon/server/bin/xymon $XYMON_server "disable twau009.ports -1 " Help? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Mills Systems Administrator Northrop Grumman 512-595-1238 david.mills at ngc.com

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HTTP / FTP Service Checks - Red Alerts
by denicoloj＠gmail.com 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

Xymon Users, I have two web servers that I am checking. Hostname-A is an off-site server hosted by a third party therefore I only perform basic network tests such as conn, http, ftp. The other(Hostname-B) is hosted on my local network and I have a client installed to check hardware as well as network tests. I set up a basic Alert for both which emails me when the http, ftp, conn, or other service becomes critical(red). I have not modified the tests themselves, they become yellow/red based on default values. Problem: I get daily email alerts stating the http service is critical or NOT OK, mostly on Hostname-A with the http and ftp service. Conn is never red. Hostname-B receives the red status as well but only http - DNS error. Whenever I see this alert and I check the service.. its always green and showing no problems. Hostname-A receives red status from many different errors including ... 'Server Timeout', 'DNS Error', and 'Connected - but Empty response (code0)'. FTP gets 'Unexepcted Service Response' from time to time much the red status is appearing much much more frequent on the http service. I do not have remote access since it is hosted on a shared server by a third party. Where can I make some adjustments on my xymon server to somehow stop these faulty red statuses. Can I configure the test to check less often, do you think the ping / service checks are being blocked by the third party due to the frequency? Perhaps I can change it to check every 10 minutes instead of 5 (which I believe is the default). Not sure what the problem is since conn is NEVER red so they cant be blocking ping attempts, not sure why the http is returning critical when its always green when I check. Appreciate any help I can get. * * *Joseph De Nicolo* *Secure Database Administrator * *Center for Complex Network Research <http://www.barabasilab.com>* *Northeastern University*

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Ldap support when built
by allen.ferdinand＠seagate.com 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

Is there an easy way to tell if ldap support was added when a Xymon server was compiled? I've started working on a system that I didn't build and don't want to spend time trying to set up tests on something that isn't support * - Allen Ferdinand* Global Collaboration & Communication<https://sites.google.com/a/seagate.com/google-mail-and-cal-resource-center/> Scotts Valley, CA Direct line: 831-439-7767

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top ten list of servers wrt cpu load
by sholmes42＠mac.com 26 Mar '13

26 Mar '13

Before I go inventing something I want to find out if anyone already has done this. We have a lot of virtual linux hosts (VMs on an ESX farm). We monitor all of them with Xymon. When there is a widespread problem (as there was this past weekend) the virtualization team would like to have a report on which VMs top the list of, for example, cpu load from Xymon historical data. (Yes there are ESX based tools, but they have not spent the $$ to put them on all of the servers.) I pointed the team manager to the metrics report in Xymon and he was impressed, but doesn't want to have to look at a graph containing plots for a few hundred hosts to find the top 10. So, I'm looking it writing a script to mine the rrd or history data from the Xymon server to produce the list he wants. He is also interested in the top disk I/O numbers, too, but I'm focusing on load average for now. He says he just wants an average for each host over the 48 hours of the weekend, which is when we usually see problems. Has anyone done this or something like it? I don't see anything in Xymon already built in to get close so I was looking at rrdtool fetch. However, this is cumbersome and, frankly I'm not understanding the data I'm getting back (for example 1.22749483e+03 seems to be 12.27... when I compare it to the graphs, so the e+03 seems to really mean *10^1, right?) But I ramble. Thanks for any help. Steve Holmes Purdue

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Where is text for col header labels?
by David.Mills＠ngc.com 25 Mar '13

25 Mar '13

Sorry - this is probably in a man page I didn't find... Where do we find / set the HTML text for the column (i.e. test name) headers? Thanks! david ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ David Mills Systems Administrator Northrop Grumman 512-595-1238 david.mills at ngc.com

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svcs on win7
by utama＠intnet.mu 24 Mar '13

24 Mar '13

Hi Xymon Dev team, i installed Xymon 4-3.10 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. its working pretty good. its the first time i installed it and am happy with it. Thanks guys for this jpb. Am currently getting an issue on my clients. all my clients are on windows. while using service monitoring (SVCS), i see that its working on Windows server 2003. however for Windows 7 clients, its not monitoring the services correctly. it shows only green though the services are going down. can you please advise how to trouleshoot this issue? regards, Shikshah

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Page-title optional or not? hosts.cfg
by bakgat8＠hotmail.com 22 Mar '13

22 Mar '13

the man page says page NAME [Page-title] This defines a page at the level below the entry page. All hosts following the "page" directive appear on this page, until a new "page", "subpage" or "subparent" line is found. I interpreted [Page-title] to be an optional field. However if I do not have it - the info page goes amuck. Since fortunately everything seems to work fine ... just the unreadable info page, not a huge deal, but it was a little tricky to figure out.

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xymon as a drop-in bb replacement
by john.thurston＠alaska.gov 22 Mar '13

22 Mar '13

We ran BB 1.9 for years, then switched to BBPE about three years ago. Earlier this month, Quest announced end-of-life for BBPE so we're looking at our options. We have fewer than 500 clients reporting into Big Brother. But swapping them out for something else is going to painful and take time. If a xymon server will happily accept bb-client messages, then I could stand up a xymon server and replace clients through attrition. Has anyone else recently gone down this path? -- Do things because you should, not just because you can. John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov Enterprise Technology Services Department of Administration State of Alaska

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Documenting servers, processes and stuff inside Xymon
by Martin.Ward＠colt.net 22 Mar '13

22 Mar '13

Hi all, Is there any way to provide a simple list of "how-to"s for a given server within Xymon? For instance I have a process that over time eats up memory so needs to be restarted. It would be useful to have a piece of text saying something like "If memory gets full over time then restart this process" in the Memory page for this server. I realise I could have an auto-restart script but I am chary of those because of the potential for it continually restarting a daemon due to memory usage if, for some reason, that daemon is not the actual cause of the memory problem. I know about the DESCR: and COMMENTS: options in hosts.cfg but they for short amounts of text on a page with lots of hosts. Is there anywhere that I can link or show more information, hints and tips, contact information and such like information for each server? |\/|artin [Colt Disclaimer] This email is from an entity of the Colt group of companies. Colt Group S.A., K2 Building, Forte 1, 2a rue Albert Borschette, L-1246 Luxembourg, R.C.S. B115679. Corporate and contact information for our entities can be found at http://colt.net/uk/en/Colt-Group-of-Companies/index.htm. Internet communications are not secure and Colt does not accept responsibility for the accurate transmission of this message. Content of this email or its attachments is not legally or contractually binding unless expressly previously agreed in writing by Colt

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Xymon flapping: network slowness reality or delusion?
by David.Mills＠ngc.com 21 Mar '13

21 Mar '13

Resolution: unfortunately, it turned out, in this case, that after stopping / restarting the Xymon server ("xymon.sh restart"), everything became docile again. The response time graph for "xymonnet" on the server looks like a really bad hair day followed by a nearly straight blue line after the restart. We're running 4.3.3 (and, yes, we're trying to migrate to 4.3.10). Has anyone heard of related bugs in this version of the code, or other theories? Thanks! david -----Original Message----- From: Mills, David (IS) Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 5:18 PM To: 'cleaver at terabithia.org' Cc: xymon at xymon.com Subject: RE: EXT :Re: [Xymon] Xymon flapping: network slowness reality or delusion? -----Original Message----- From: cleaver at terabithia.org [mailto:cleaver at terabithia.org] Sent: Friday, March 15, 2013 1:31 PM To: Mills, David (IS) Cc: xymon at xymon.com Subject: EXT :Re: [Xymon] Xymon flapping: network slowness reality or delusion? > Hi, All ... > > The other day, our Xymon (4.3.3) started sending out notifications due > to flapping on various hosts, various network-based tests which lasted > for a rather sharply-defined period. It caused a fair bit of angst and > I was on the hot-seat to prove Xymon was functioning properly. > > Here are some of the summary facts: > <snip> Assuming you're saving status results in history (the default), can you look at the status messages from the down periods? Were they DNS timeouts or timeout timeouts? I'd start with the ping checks, since that's pretty cut-and-dried... - Has anything like this occurred before? - Even if no threshold was crossed on the Xymon server itself, take a look at the 'trends' page for the polling host for that period and see if anything unusual happened around the same time? HTH, -jc == Thanks! After poking around on the Xymonnet history dumps, I found some very interesting stuff I don't know what to make of: - For the top 20 worst times in a 24 hour period, the three categories of networking that had significantly elevated levels were "TCP tests completed", "DNS tests executed" and "NTP tests executed". - Oddly, after graphing the respective times for these categories in a spreadsheet, it became obvious that the DNS and TCP tests were roughly inversions of each other: when one was super-high, the other would go low. - Even weirder, the PING tests were ... NORMAL!! While the rest of the Xymon network tests were jumping off a cliff, good old 'ping' was chugging along without (mostly) mishap. This last datum seems to blow a hole in the theory that this is truly a network problem (vs. a Xymon server/host problem). Any other thoughts? david

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