March 2026 - Xymon - Xymon mailman web

Still here, just AFK
by Mark Felder 26 May '26

26 May '26

I know I helped kick off the renewed interest in Xymon, but I've just been a bit too busy with other things to dig in deeper at the moment. I'm watching and reading everything going on, though. Keep up the good work everyone :) Mark

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Two Draft PRs: PCRE Compatibility and RRDtool 1.9 Support – Request for Testing
by Bruno Manzoni 25 Mar '26

25 Mar '26

Hi all, I just opened two PRs: * PCRE1/PCRE2 compatibility layer migration: (draft) https://github.com/xymon-monitoring/xymon/pull/74 * RRDtool compatibility for < 1.9 and >= 1.9: https://github.com/xymon-monitoring/xymon/pull/72 Both implement a compatibility layer and aim to make the new libraries the mainstream code path. If someone could run the checklist tests, that would be super helpful. Once we have a couple of confirmations, we could .. move toward making a release! I pulled ideas from lots of the existing issues/PRs - even if I do not remember every detail, they were really useful. And since I am not exactly a C expert, that support helped me a lot to get these two PRs ready. If I missed something or got anything wrong, please tell me. Thanks a lot in advance! Bruno

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Report: CMake build work progress: Blocking Build failure and package dependencies info
by Bruno Manzoni 09 Mar '26

09 Mar '26

Hi all, As you may know (or not), I am currently**working on*delivering a functional CMake build*: - *It will run in parallel with the current build process for as long as needed; the existing build and packaging tools remain fully usable and untouched.* - *It should help us automate distribution packaging* and improve/optimize the packaging workflows over time, and also incorporate some of Terabithia's build improvements (futur). Unfortunately, parts of the *current build process are now impacted by changes in upstream package availability and major changes in linked libraries.* Since I do not want to build a migration path on top of an obsolete baseline, *I (we) first need to resolve the remaining package-related build issues.* This also aligns with the work already done by Roland (Debian) that is not yet fully merged into main, but is already published in the Debian distribution. To ensure a working CMake build, I need a clear and comprehensive overview of the current (legacy) build, so *we can later compare both build systems reliably.* For that, *I created a CI tool that builds using the existing flow (configure, make, make install) *- and it also works with the new CMake build - and *collects build and install status, along with additional detailed information to support build comparisons. *This is a high-level summary of some of the information the tool provides: *OS coverage and build variant lanes (see below for details) and package dependencies info * *- Scope: 177 lane jobs* *- Outcome: 165 passed, 12 failed * CI environment note: *this CI pipeline runs on GitHub infrastructure only *(GitHub-hosted runners), using the available execution backends there (Docker containers, host-based jobs, and VMs where applicable).*It does not assume any external or self-hosted build environment*. (This tool is not currently available on the upstream repo, but it is already available on my branch (see link below) and will be added upstream when ready? and more reliable.) This run also includes preliminary work to *capture per-lane package dependencies*, to establish a *baseline for the future CMake build*. Note: this is not produced by CMake (but it can); *it is generated using the standard legacy build flow* (configure, make, make install). Bugs may still exist in this baseline/dependency extraction work. *OS coverage summary:* *Fully passing (all lanes passed):* - Alpine (3.19-3.23, edge) amd64/arm64 - Arch Linux (base/latest) - CentOS 7 - Debian 11.11-slim amd64/arm64 - Debian 12.13-slim amd64/arm64 - Fedora 40/41/42 - FreeBSD 13.5 / 14.3 / 15.0 - macOS 14 / 15 / 26 / latest (work in progress; not fully available yet, despite what these tests might suggest) - NetBSD 9.2 / 9.3 / 9.4 / 10.0 / 10.1 - OpenBSD 7.6 / 7.7 / 7.8 - openSUSE Leap 15.5 / 15.6 / 16.0 - Oracle Linux 8 / 9 - Rocky Linux 8 / 9 - Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 (amd64/arm64) *Not fully passing (some lanes failed):* - AlmaLinux 10: PASS ct-server; FAIL ct-client and Server - Debian 13.3-slim (amd64/arm64): PASS ct-server; FAIL ct-client and Server (see note) - openSUSE Tumbleweed: PASS ct-server; FAIL ct-client and Server - Oracle Linux 10 (arm64 and 10-slim amd64): PASS ct-server; FAIL ct-client and Server Note:* - Debian 13.3 (Trixie)* has been patched by Roland, so installation works from the standard apt repositories for all lanes. -*Variant "ct-client"* is a client build that can perform some of the work normally done on the server on the client host; it does not appear to be widely used in practice. *All current failures are PCRE dependency-related* and*fail to build using standard distribution repositories* (no extra/third-party repos). The PCRE-related failures are a blocking prerequisite, and they likely conceal additional package dependency issues that will only become visible once PCRE is fixed. *Some next fixes (PRs) are already prepared but still need review:* - rrd: detect argv const-ABI (1.9+/1.8 backports) and drop RRDtool <1.2 gates (PR #80) - snmpcollect: switch MD5 to SHA1 when MD5 is unavailable (PR #75) *The PCRE work (PR #5) and these two fixes should resolve the package dependency issues* we are currently experiencing (and that also block my progress), and should bring the main branch much closer to Roland's work. For more info on this analysis: *https://github.com/bonomani/xymon/actions/runs/22792414183* Bruno

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Struggle supporting new OSs
by Nicola 06 Mar '26

06 Mar '26

Hi, I have been thinking about this in a while, and I am now convinced that we should aim at a 4.4.0 release which just drops support for old libraries not available or deprecated in modern OSs/distributions. We can rename and `sed` the version for the current 4.4 branch, but this will ease many of the efforts which are draining our energies to keep compatibility, and at the same time if we need minor bugfixes in the 4.3 branch, we can add them for dinosaurs which still require old libraries. What do you think? Nicola Mastodon <https://joinmastodon.org/>: @nic@mathstodon.xyz

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Thank you.
by Grant Taylor 02 Mar '26

02 Mar '26

Thank you for Xymon software and to the Xymon community. I wanted to send a quick note saying that a month doesn't go by, sometimes not even a week, I think to my self or slip and say "but Xymon does that" when asking why some other monitoring solution doesn't catch something that seems trivial. The list of things that Xymon detects that other solutions have failed to detect: - incorrect time - CPU test - lack of reports a la. PURPLE - TLS certificate expiration - sslcert - HTTP reply status codes - http I'm sure there are many other things that have made me mumble to myself. Yes, I know that other things can be configured to monitor some or all of these things, but that requires additional effort. Conversely Xymon just does it with no more effort than configuring it to look at a port. But the incorrect time has been a BIG problem for many of of the other monitoring solutions that my employer uses. Xymon has made it extremely easy to monitor these things and has proven to be EXTREMELY useful. Thank you. -- Grant. . . .

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