On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 09:51:07AM -0800, Bob Gordon wrote:
The systems that we monitor are across multiple time zones. The local admins however are insisting that the pages be displayed in a timezone local to them instead of the GMT zone that the monitoring system is using.
Is there a way to add a second timezone to the display or change the timezone that the graphs are displayed in (without changing the TZ of the maonitoring station)? As a correlary to this, is there anyway to have the grapsh displayed in multiple time zones?
It's mostly possible, but it will require some tweaking.
First, you must figure out exactly which timestamps you want to localize.
A Hobbit overview page (the one listing your hosts) looks like this:
Hobbit Current Status Mon Nov 21 22:32:24 2005
cpu disk http memory
hostA X X X XThere's only one timestamp here: The one in the top right corner. This is generated by bbgen when it builds these webpages; since bbgen runs on the Hobbit server, it will pick up the local timezone setting for the Hobbit server and use that. This can be changed, but doing so would require that you build the Hobbit webpages once for every timezone you want to support - and place them in separate web directories, each with their URL. It would be easier if these pages were generated dynamically, but alas - that is not the case currently (but that might change - I am currently working on a new "NK" page which is dynamically generated, and I would really prefer if all of the Hobbit webpages were built on-the-fly).
Next is the detailed status view - what you see when you click one of the status icons. It often looks like this
Hobbit hostA - telnet Mon Nov 21 22:32:24 2005
Mon Nov 21 22:32:24 2005 telnet OK
------------------------------
| The hobbit graph |
------------------------------This webpage is generated dynamically by the hobbitsvc.cgi CGI script, and you could set the timezone when running that to modify the way times are displayed. The timestamp in the upper right corner is generated by hobbitsvc.cgi, but the one to the left of the "telnet OK" message is NOT - that timestamp actually comes from the host that reported this status, which could be the Hobbit server running the network tests, or an single host running a client-side test. Changing that timestamp on-the-fly will be very difficult, since it is really just part of the status message that was reported to Hobbit.
The Hobbit graphs are also dynamically generated by the hobbitgraph.cgi, so those could be customized.
Last there are a couple of reporting webpages where can enter absolute date/time - like the eventlog report where you can choose to show which events occurred between two absolute times. If you want to change these, I guess it can be done by setting the timezone when the CGI that runs these reports is invoked.
So what most of it comes down to is some way for the Hobbit webserver to figure out what timezone you'd like the webpages to use. I guess it could be placed into some web "cookie" that would be passed around while the user browses the Hobbit webpages, but you would need to modify the CGI programs to pick this up and modify the timezone it uses.
I am fortunate to live in a single-timezone country, so I haven't had this problem; but I can understand that it might be an issue when you are monitoring systems placed in different timezones. So I am perfectly willing to look at implementing this if enough people say that it will be useful.
Regards, Henrik