Xymon seems like a LOT of overhead for a simple ping test.

What about something like bash?

while true; do until ping -c1 -W2 192.168.1.1 &>/dev/null; do sleep 3 done

echo "ping success"

Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373

On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 9:44 PM, James <kfc.android at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the prompt reply guys, really appreciate that. The reason why I want to modify Xymon is because I'm working on a small class project which only need a simple networking-related function (in my case: ping) with minimal size of code.

I understand Xymon is powerful and runs fast in most of cases, but the best case is to make some minor changes based on Xymon simply because I can't just take Xymon and turn it in as my project.

My optimal goal is: to use minimal amount of code to perform a ping test, but keep the framework and style of Xymon. (Now I'm reading Xymonping.c file under /xymonnet folder)

Anyone has idea about how I can achieve this goal? Any opinion will be greatly appreciated! Thanks again!

James

---

Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon

Hi James,

On Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:44:48 -0800, James <kfc.android at gmail.com> wrote:

The reason why I want to modify Xymon is because I'm working on a small class project which only need a simple networking-related function (in my case: ping) with minimal size of code. [snip] My optimal goal is: to use minimal amount of code to perform a ping test, but keep the framework and style of Xymon. (Now I'm reading Xymonping.c file under /xymonnet folder)

I think those are somewhat conflicting goals; keeping a Xymon style "framework" will require more work than what is really necessary for a "small class project".

My guess is that the primary focus of your project is to show that you understand some network programming, rather than prove that you understand the details of Xymon - although I would be personally flattered if Xymon became mandatory teaching :-)

My advice to you would be:

Is it a requirement to use ping as the network test, or could you use a TCP connection as the network test ? ping is a bit complicated, because the normal network programming API's don't support it directly - you have to more or less construct the contents of each packet yourself. The socket API in Unix (or Winsock on Windows) have much better support for a normal transport-layer protocol - TCP - so that would allow you to show that you understand network programming, rather then getting bogged down with the details of ICMP packet request/response formats.

If you are allowed to use normal TCP connections for your network test, try writing some code using the Unix socket API and non-blocking sockets. I.e. you need to use the socket(), connect(), select(), read(), write() and close() API's - plus the various little details of getting all the data structures setup correctly. There must be lots of sample code for this - not least the "select_tut(2)" man-page in Linux - but for Xymon code look at lib/sendmsg.c the "sendtoxymond()" routine, or xymonnet/contest.c file "do_tcp_tests()". The first one is good to understand the basics, because it does one connection at a time; the xymonnet/contest.c code is a bit more complicated, because it juggles multiple connections at once. With TCP, you can use a connection to e.g. port 80 (web) or some other port - possibly something user-configurable on a per-host basis.

If you must use ping, then xymonping.c borrows heavily from fping, so have a look at that code as well.

Once you know how to check if you can connect/ping a host, then you can decide what the configuration file should be like, and how the test results can be reported. If you want something "xymon-like", then perhaps you can just generate a simple webpage listing the test result, so it gets updated whenever your test-program runs.

Regards, Henrik

PS: I know this does go a bit off-topic for the Xymon list, but we've all had to learn things at some point. So I'm just trying to guide the newbies in the right direction :-)

Hi Henrik,

Got midterms these days, so it's a little bit late to reply this post. By the way, it's my great, great honor to get your reply :P

*"My guess is that the primary focus of your project is to show that you* *understand some network programming, rather than prove that you understand the details of Xymon - although I would be personally flattered if Xymon became mandatory teaching :-)"* * * For the part regarding project goal: It is very true that the purpose of our class project is to demonstrate that we have some kind of network programming skill, but if we can demonstrate a very good understanding on Xymon will also be considered as good project. Based on my personal opinion, Xymon is capable to perform many tests and it's not just several files of code, thus, it may take me months to understand the whole thing. Hence, I was thinking about to show a good understanding regarding a part(or function) of Xymon (ping, in this case, is just my idea)

*"Is it a requirement to use ping as the network test, or could you use a TCP connection as the network test ? ping is a bit complicated, because the normal network programming API's don't support it directly - you have to more or less construct the contents of each packet yourself. The socket API in Unix (or Winsock on Windows) have much better support for a normal transport-layer protocol - TCP - so that would allow you to show that you understand network programming, rather then getting bogged down with the details of ICMP packet request/response formats."*

Since you mentioned ping test is more complicated, while TCP is easier to perform, I will definitely ask my professor on next class meeting. Since this class project is just to show we have certain network programming and we are all newbies to this field, I guess the chance to do TCP connection test is very high.

By the way, it takes time for me to digest your code-writing suggestions, but I really appreciate that suggestion because it points out a direction that I can work on. I was like a blind without your suggestion. I wonder is that okay if I send you some e-mail regarding network programming questions? I afraid the content may be too easy and not related to this mailing list.

Last but not least, as I'm working on this project, I will keep everyone whoever interested posted, who knows maybe someone will be asked to do the same/similar project like us.

Thanks again, Henrik, my classmate won't believe who I got reply from.

Best, James

2012/12/3 <henrik at hswn.dk>

Hi James,

On Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:44:48 -0800, James <kfc.android at gmail.com> wrote:

...

The reason why I want to modify Xymon is because I'm working on a small class project which only need a simple networking-related function (in my case: ping) with minimal size of code. [snip] My optimal goal is: to use minimal amount of code to perform a ping test, but keep the framework and style of Xymon. (Now I'm reading Xymonping.c file under /xymonnet folder)

I think those are somewhat conflicting goals; keeping a Xymon style "framework" will require more work than what is really necessary for a "small class project".

My guess is that the primary focus of your project is to show that you understand some network programming, rather than prove that you understand the details of Xymon - although I would be personally flattered if Xymon became mandatory teaching :-)

My advice to you would be:

Is it a requirement to use ping as the network test, or could you use a TCP connection as the network test ? ping is a bit complicated, because the normal network programming API's don't support it directly - you have to more or less construct the contents of each packet yourself. The socket API in Unix (or Winsock on Windows) have much better support for a normal transport-layer protocol - TCP - so that would allow you to show that you understand network programming, rather then getting bogged down with the details of ICMP packet request/response formats.

If you are allowed to use normal TCP connections for your network test, try writing some code using the Unix socket API and non-blocking sockets. I.e. you need to use the socket(), connect(), select(), read(), write() and close() API's - plus the various little details of getting all the data structures setup correctly. There must be lots of sample code for this - not least the "select_tut(2)" man-page in Linux - but for Xymon code look at lib/sendmsg.c the "sendtoxymond()" routine, or xymonnet/contest.c file "do_tcp_tests()". The first one is good to understand the basics, because it does one connection at a time; the xymonnet/contest.c code is a bit more complicated, because it juggles multiple connections at once. With TCP, you can use a connection to e.g. port 80 (web) or some other port - possibly something user-configurable on a per-host basis.

If you must use ping, then xymonping.c borrows heavily from fping, so have a look at that code as well.

Once you know how to check if you can connect/ping a host, then you can decide what the configuration file should be like, and how the test results can be reported. If you want something "xymon-like", then perhaps you can just generate a simple webpage listing the test result, so it gets updated whenever your test-program runs.

Regards, Henrik

PS: I know this does go a bit off-topic for the Xymon list, but we've all had to learn things at some point. So I'm just trying to guide the newbies in the right direction :-)

-- Best, James

Thanks, Martin! I think you got my point. My idea is just to keep Xymon's ping and web-page display function, like a "little Xymon" program which is based on Xymon but only have very limited functionality.

Maybe I can use the layout of how Xymon display the result and strip down the options I don't need? Or, if possible, could you please give me some hint about how to create my own HTML provider?

Betsy, Thanks for your advise, I learned that from one of my coding class, we were given the full source code of a working program, and our instructor asked us to modify it to meet his requirement. (He purposely did this just want to let us know to write our own code is smarter to copy/modify someone's code) But this time is different, we were approved to use any open source program and modify it to meet our need. Maybe I can do as Martin said: take the part which I am needed, and make it a smaller program. Thanks for the suggestion, I really appreciate time you've spent.

James

Thanks for the reply, Roland, What you pointed seems like a very straight forward process, however, I'm still figuring out all those .cfg and .c files in Xymon (I call Xymon a package because it includes a lot of folders/files) and I guess it takes a while to get a good understanding. What I am going to do now is to continue my study on "Xymonping.c" and then "Xymonserver.cfg" One silly question, is Xymon (in my case Xymon-4.3.10) shipped with both server and client? If so, I can ignore those files which belong to client side, right? Thanks for the advisory, I really appreciate that :D

James

2012/11/27 Roland Soderstrom <Rolands at logicaltech.com.au>

I would just compile the latest Xymon server with xymonping.****

Configure Apache2 as a webserver.****

Install Xymon and Edit xymonserver.cfg to your setup.****

Populate hosts.cfg with the hosts you want, you get a xymon page with all your ping hosts. (conn)****

That is a fairly basic and simple solution.****

Even if all that other code is there it is not really used.****

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4.3.10 has prepared packages, ready to install for a bunch of different distributions. (no compile req)****

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**- **Roland****

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*From:* xymon-bounces at xymon.com [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] *On Behalf Of *James *Sent:* Wednesday, 28 November 2012 8:23 AM *To:* betsy.schwartz at gmail.com; Martin.Ward at colt.net

*Cc:* xymon at xymon.com *Subject:* Re: [Xymon] [Newbie] Smaller, lighter Xymon based program?****

---

Thanks, Martin! I think you got my point.****

My idea is just to keep Xymon's ping and web-page display function, like a "little Xymon" program****

which is based on Xymon but only have very limited functionality.****

---

Maybe I can use the layout of how Xymon display the result and strip down the options I don't need?****

Or, if possible, could you please give me some hint about how to create my own HTML provider?****

---

Betsy,****

Thanks for your advise, I learned that from one of my coding class, we were given the full source code ****

of a working program, and our instructor asked us to modify it to meet his requirement. (He purposely****

did this just want to let us know to write our own code is smarter to copy/modify someone's code)****

But this time is different, we were approved to use any open source program and modify it to meet****

our need. Maybe I can do as Martin said: take the part which I am needed, and make it a smaller program.****

Thanks for the suggestion, I really appreciate time you've spent.****

---

James****

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Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon

-- Best, James