On the client side, the only change was in /home/xymon/client/bin/xymonclient.sh. See attached diff. You'll need to fill in the destination server name.
On the server side, add the email alias to /etc/aliases and rebuild the db files:
xymonmsg: |/usr/local/bin/xymonmsg.sh
newaliasesInstall the attached xymonmsg.sh script to match the above path. Check permissions - it needs to be executable by your email receiver.
This is just a basic configuration. Extra frills that could be added include:
1) encrypt the payload, especially if you send logs.
2) send a second message with a cryptographic signature forauthentication 3) add sequence numbers to the subject, then only accept a report with a higher number than the last, because emails are not guaranteed to arrive in the same order as they're sent.
Ralph Mitchell
On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 4:51 AM, Vernon Everett <everett.vernon at gmail.com>wrote:
Yes, I can see it. It's working perfectly. I forgot about using pipes and mail aliases, and my mind was darting off down the more difficult tracks. This is too easy.
So that Xymon server on you IP is receiving all it's status updates via email? Brilliant!
If you have any code snippets you can send me, it would be appreciated. Thanks for bringing me back to the simple way of doing things.
Regards Vernon
On 16 March 2013 15:16, Ralph Mitchell <ralphmitchell at gmail.com> wrote:
my laptop, running the xymon client, delivering the standard status report via email to my server. Both systems are on my home network. The laptop is on a wifi link.
The status message is about 80Kb, but I'm base64-encoding in-flight because there seems to be a line-length limit, probably enforced by mailx.
Details tomorrow, if you're interested. It's past 3am, and I need sleep...
Ralph Mitchell
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 10:56 PM, Ralph Mitchell <ralphmitchell at gmail.com
wrote:
the xymon client script assembles the status report into a file, then transmits that to the server over port 1984 using the xymon client program. You could pipe it through mailx instead, to send it to the xymon server.
on the Xymon server, use an email alias to pipe the incoming mail through a script. Or use something like procmail to handle it. Add an alias like this to /etc/aliases:
xymonmsg: |/usr/local/bin/xymonmsg.sh
then run "newaliases" to recreate the alias db files. Any email addressed to xymonmsg at your.server.com will be piped through that script.
In the email, everything up to the first blank line is a header. After that blank line, the remainder is the body of the email, which would be the xymon report. That can be broken out and passed through the xymon command.
I've done this to deliver logs, but the principal is sound for xymon reports as well.
Ralph Mitchell
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 9:30 PM, Vernon Everett < everett.vernon at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Adam and everybody
You are of course completely correct, and confirmed what I knew, but didn't really want to accept.
IT people love problem solving within defined limited parameters, so let's see if we can come up with an elegant solution to this one, because I am sure I am not the first to encounter this.
The only "connection" I have between the sites, is email. Is there a way to get the clients to send data to the server via emails? Alternatively, we could get a local server instance to update the master server with consolidated data via email.
I am thinking the core of the problem is 2-fold.
- Send the data via email from client or local server.
- Receive and interpret the data at server side by parsing the incoming emails.
Unless I missed something, both these tasks are non-trivial. Any ideas?
Regards Vernon
On 15 March 2013 08:53, Adam Goryachev < mailinglists at websitemanagers.com.au> wrote:
On 15/03/13 11:19, Vernon Everett wrote:
Hi all
Here's an interesting problem that has been put to me. A potential customer has a number of independent IT installations, with no always-on link between them or central IT. If there is an issue at a site, support staff will connect using VPN or Citrix over the interwebs. Is it possible to set up a central Xymon server to monitor these remote sites? If yes, then how? Has anybody done this before?
Do you mean the sites have no "always-on link" like a dial-up connection ? or do you mean there is no VPN always on, but they always have working Internet?
At the end of the day, if you want to get data out of the network to a remote location (whether you use xymon or any other widget), you will need to decide how that information gets there. Whether that is via the Internet or sneakernet is up to you, but obviously sneakernet will be less frequent and a bit more time consuming.
Once you decide on how the data can be transported, it is just a matter of working out how to tell xymon to use that transport method. Let us know what you come up with, and I'm sure someone will be able to offer further advice.
Regards, Adam
-- Adam Goryachev Website Managers www.websitemanagers.com.au
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
-- "Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
-- "Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton