April 2013 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

Checking disk space on a "backup" system
by Michael.Beatty＠sherwin.com 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

All of the hosts that I will be monitoring have a backup. This backup is, for most all practical purposes, idle. It does nothing but sits and wait for someone to move it into production. The primary system copies files and database exports over to this backup system. I had no intention on running a Xymon client on these backup systems (though one would be installed and waiting to be started), the only monitoring is a ping test. With that said, one exposure that exists on these backup systems is that the disk space in the file system has the potential to fill up. Is there any functionality built into xymon that would let me check the disk space on this remote system and report it back from the primary system? My initial thought was to write an extension script that does an 'rsh backup du /home/user/' and parsing the results and test against a threshold, but I would prefer to utilize what is built into xymon before recreating the wheel. Thanks -- Michael Beatty

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Xymon Server in Debian
by dannyroberts.personal＠googlemail.com 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Hi Folks, I am currently testing out Xymon and using Debian as both the server and client in my tests. I installed both xymon clients and the xymon server from the Debian repo rather than using the .deb from the xymon site or compiling from source. I have a couple of issues that may be Debian sepcific, I originally asked this question on the Debian forums ( http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=103076) but got no response. 1. I created a user using "htpasswd" so that I could access the cgi sections of the web server, however I am never prompted for a username/password so still cannot access these sections. 2. I was looking for hosts.cfg to setup monitoring of diskspace and the like but the file does not exist under /etc/hobbit where I expected it. In-fact any file mentioned on this page does not seem to exist: http://xymon.com/xymon/help/xymon-config.html This second point in particular makes me think Debian is doing something odd with packaging and file names etc. Any help is greatly appreciated. -- Kind Regards Danny R Website: http://danny-roberts.info/

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Alert Recovery question
by tlewick＠apsaranetworks.com 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Does Duration work with Recovered in alerts.cfg. Meaning, is there a way to tell xymon not to send the recovered message until the link/device/threshold is back to recovery level for at least some time, i.e. 1 or 5 minutes? Thanks, Taylor

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Custom Graphs
by alias＠kimber.net.au 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Our weakness with xymon is forecasting disk trends. With the right thresholds I can be proactive in managing disk capacity however it's not possible to check the past 576days for hundreds of servers. Metric Reporting results are blank when selecting multiple hosts and disks however it does work for CPU but it compiles all results\servers into one graph . I would like to see disk trends of 200hosts display in 200graphs on the one page. Has anyone got any suggestions or "been there, done that" ? regards

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Reverse DNS lookup check not working
by spah＠syntec.co.uk 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

There seems to be a bug where DNS PTR (Reverse DNS lookup) checks do not work in Xymon (4.3.7, but I don't recall seeing any fixes in the commits). The man page for hosts.cfg says the format to use is: dns=TYPE:lookup and one of the examples underneath for TYPE is PTR (reverse). I have tried this in small and capitals and neither work (the result is Name not found). Using A does work though. I wonder if it could be related to the fact that DiG needs to be invoked with -x for PTR checks. A quick look at the DiG man page suggests you could use either: # dig -t PTR my.ip.ad.dr.ess Or: # dig my.ip.ad.dr.ess PTR However, this is not the case. A closer looks reveals you have to use: # dig -x my.ip.ad.dr.ess So what I am saying is that the treatment for type PTR differs from the other types, and that the parameters supplied to DiG (if Xymon uses DiG ) differ for PTR. Tested manually with DiG 9.2.4 and the latest RHEL5: 9.3.6-P1-RedHat-9.3.6-20.P1.el5_8.6. Kind regards, SebA

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Fwd: Re: Xymon Server in Debian
by iain＠shihad.org 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

On 2013-04-11 09:06, Danny Roberts wrote: > Hi Folks, > > I am currently testing out Xymon and using Debian as both the server > and client in my tests. I installed both xymon clients and the xymon > server from the Debian repo rather than using the .deb from the xymon > site or compiling from source. I have a couple of issues that may be > Debian sepcific, I originally asked this question on the Debian > forums > (http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=103076 [1]) but got no > response. > > 1. I created a user using "htpasswd" so that I could access the cgi > sections of the web server, however I am never prompted for a > username/password so still cannot access these sections. How did you setup you apache installation for Xymon? Sounds like you need to add authentication config for apache here. > 2. I was looking for hosts.cfg to setup monitoring of diskspace and > the like but the file does not exist under /etc/hobbit where I > expected it. In-fact any file mentioned on this page does not seem to > exist: http://xymon.com/xymon/help/xymon-config.html [2] Have a look in /usr/lib/hobbit/. Under there you will see server for the server files and client for the client files > > This second point in particular makes me think Debian is doing > something odd with packaging and file names etc. Any help is greatly > appreciated. Cheers Iain

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Feature request: add description in hosts.cfg for conn multiple IP entry
by bewhite＠fellowes.com 11 Apr '13

11 Apr '13

Use the COMMENT keyword in your hosts.cfg entry and it will display on the web page. Bruce White Senior Enterprise Systems Engineer | Phone: 1-630-671-5169 | Fax: 630-893-1648 | bewhite at fellowes.com | http://www.fellowes.com/ Disclaimer: The information contained in this message may be privileged and confidential and protected from disclosure. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient or an employee or agent responsible for delivering this message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the message and deleting it from your computer. Thank you. Fellowes, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: xymon-bounces at xymon.com [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Deiss, Mark Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 7:46 AM To: xymon Subject: [Xymon] Feature request: add description in hosts.cfg for conn multiple IP entry Maybe this is supported(?) or someone has a hack available: Would like to see support for a displayed description field for the hosts.cfg conn declaration for cases where there are multiple IPs. When there are a multiple IPs being tested on a given host, it can be a bit confusing figuring out what a particular failing IP is associated with. Ideally the description would show up in the status report to help identify the IP's purpose. For example in the hosts.cfg file: 1.2.3.1 main-host1 # conn=worst,1.2.4.10 (ILO address), 1.2.5.20 (PA-RISC Console port), 1.2.3.2 (Web Server Business Portal), 1.2.3.3 (Web Server https Business Portal), 1.2.3.4 (Oracle Listener/databases connections)...... In web status page: 1.2.3.1 is alive (1ms) 1.2.4.10 is alive (3 ms) ILO address 1.2.5.20 is alive (3 ms) PA-RISC Console port 1.2.3.2 is alive (1 ms) Web Server Business Portal 1.2.3.3 is unreachable Web Server https Business Portal 1.2.3.4 is alive (1 ms) Oracle Listener/databases connections The secondary IPs can be declared as separate entries in the hosts.cfg but that can lead to display "bloat". Even using the separate entries, there is still no user-friendly detail in the status messages on what is being tested. group-compress Operations 1.2.3.1 main-host1 # conn .... ... Group-compress ILO ports 1.2.4.10 main-host1 # conn .... Group-compress Console ports 1.2.5.20 main-host1 # conn .... Group-compress Web Servers ports 1.2.3.2 main-host1 # conn=worst,1.2.3.3 (so if the .3 address ip is unreachable, you don't know what the business impact is from just looking at the web status display) .... _______________________________________________ Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon

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/etc/passwd Monitoring of Solaris Xymon Clients
by Nick＠Pettefar.com 10 Apr '13

10 Apr '13

Is there an established way of monitoring for /etc/passwd entriy changes/additions on Solaris servers? If not, is it possible to add it as a log to be fetched and then do some processing on the Xymon server? Regards, Nick Pettefar

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vim config parser
by Phil.Crooker＠orix.com.au 10 Apr '13

10 Apr '13

Has anyone done a vim syntax file for xymon config files? I'm starting to look into it, but just wondering if anyone has done the work? A syntax file is the bit that colourises the syntactic elements of a language - eg bash or perl. If you are curious as well: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/syntax.html cheers, Phil

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PROCS not monitored correctly -what is wrong with this picture?? (Find the error!) (LONG)
by betsy.schwartz＠gmail.com 09 Apr '13

09 Apr '13

My apologies to anyone who gets this on a digest I'm having some odd issues with procs on a database cluster and I would be very grateful for any clues! We have multiple rule sets to cut down on multiple alerts for shared disk, and because some have more capacity db0-db6 are Solaris 10 servers (there is no db8) running xymon 4.3.10 db11-db62 are RHEL Linux running a mix of xymon 4.3.10 and 4.3.7 server is a RHEL VM running xymon 4.3.10 Procs have been screwey for a while, but we only noticed when we added rngd testing to the linux boxes db1, db2, db3, db6 are alerting for missing rngd . db0, db4 and db5 are NOT (this is particularly puzzling since db5&db6 share a rule set, as do db0 and db1. I'd expect them to go as pairs. db1, db2, db3, and db6 all show: [image: green] cron (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] nscd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] xntpd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] cron (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] nscd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] ntpd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: yellow] rngd (found 0, req. 1 or more)[image: green] cron (found 1, req. 1 or more) db0, db4 and db5 all show: [image: green] cron (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] nscd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] xntpd (found 1, req. 1 or more)[image: green] cron (found 1, req. 1 or more) That last cron comes from a HOST=* rule atthe end. Can you find what is wrong with the lines below? #-------------------#Database Servers HOST=%^db[0|1].example.com MEMPHYS 100 101 MEMSWAP 85 95 PROC cron 1 -1 yellow PROC nscd 1 -1 yellow PROC xntpd 1 -1 yellow # PROC sar -1 4 yellow LOAD 80.0 120.0 DISK /oracle/dba_msc_nfs2 101 101 DISK /oracle/data09 99 99 DISK /oracle/data10 97 98 DISK /oracle/data17 96 97 DISK /oracle/data22 98 99 DISK %.*archivelogs.* 90 95 DISK %.*redologs.* 90 95 DISK %.*data.* 95 96 LOG /export/home/xymon/client/tmp/powermt.out %degraded COLOR=yellow HOST=%^db[2|3|4|8].example.com UP 30m 9999d MEMPHYS 100 101 MEMSWAP 85 95 # LOAD 48.0 64.0 LOAD 80.0 120.0 PROC cron 1 -1 yellow PROC nscd 1 -1 yellow PROC xntpd 1 -1 yellow # PROC sar -1 4 yellow DISK %.*data.* IGNORE DISK %.*oracle.* IGNORE DISK %.*redologs.* IGNORE DISK %.* 80 90 LOG /export/home/xymon/client/tmp/powermt.out %degraded COLOR=yellow HOST=%^db[5|6].example.com UP 30m 9999d MEMPHYS 100 101 MEMSWAP 85 95 LOAD 160.0 240.0 DISK /oracle/export02 90 95 DISK %.*oracle.* IGNORE DISK %.* 80 90 PROC cron 1 -1 yellow PROC nscd 1 -1 yellow PROC xntpd 1 -1 yellow # PROC sar -1 4 yellow LOG /export/home/xymon/client/tmp/powermt.out %degraded COLOR=yellow HOST=%^db[11|12|13|21|22|23|31|32|33|61|62].bo3.* UP 30m 9999d MEMPHYS 100 101 MEMSWAP 85 95 LOAD 64.0 128.0 PROC cron 1 -1 yellow PROC nscd 1 -1 yellow PROC ntpd 1 -1 yellow PROC rngd 1 -1 yellow (there are usually more LOG lines but I removed them for clarity, and verified that the errors persist)

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