OR USE curl, WHICH IS BETTER...

Thanks for the reply Jeremy. I thought about making a "httphead" test in the protocols.cfg file, and using the "curl" utility to do what BigBrother used to do, but I don't see how to pass the URL to the test.

Is there some implicit passing of test URL to these protocols.cfg defined tests (like the string from the hosts.cfg file is stuck at the end of the invoked command taken from protocols.cfg?) I don't see any examples in the file, and it looks like everything just sends canned strings.

In this case, I'd want to run the "curl" command like this:

 /usr/bin/curl -g -s -S -m 45 -I -k --connect-timeout 15

with the URL taken from the hosts.cfg line, which looks like this:

 0.0.0.0         xyz-web2 # noconn --timeout=15 https://xyz.somewhere.com/xyz/portal/user/anon/js_peid/123456789/panel/Main/template/content

so that webpage could be tested by the curl utility, which is configured to send only a "HEAD" request to the web server (the '-I' option.) That curl command is what was being used in BigBrother.

Cheers,

-Andrew

On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Jeremy Laidman wrote:

On 10 April 2015 at 11:19, Andrew Rakowski <landrew at pnnl.gov> wrote: I didn't understand why nobody was complaining previously, until I saw that BigBro was set up to use the "curl" command with the "-I" option (aka the "--head" option) to send a "HEAD" request to the server.  The BigBro web test used this setting:

This was one of the problems with BigBro - it forked to external programs to do the probes which doesn't scale, whereas xymonnet does it all internally.

Alas, xymonnet sends either a POST or a GET request, and this cannot be modified by configuration.

I can see two options for you.  One is to do your own curl/wget call with a HEAD request, in a script.  The other option is to define your own "http" protocol definition in protocols.cfg and use that.  You would probably need to name it something other than "http" otherwise xymonnet will use its internal protocol code rather than what's defined in protocols.cfg.

J

Could always do something ugly like httphead://blah.com since we have to parse http/https/etc...

J.C. Cleaver wrote:

Thinking about it, this might be something that's not too difficult to add into xymonnet either. A HEAD is basically just a GET from the poller's perspective, and any evaluation on body contents (or lack thereof) is semantically identical to the configuration options available now.

An open question is what the best way to indicate that this is a "HEAD-only" test would be.

It could be something applied to the entire host line (like browser=), made into a separate column (similar to httpstatus= or post=, except without the... POST), or another per-URL protocol specifier similar to how the TLS/SSL configuration is handled.

(I could see use cases for all three, although I think the middle option might be the most manageable.)

For now, however, this is something that would need to be handled via an external script.

Regards,

-jc

On Mon, April 13, 2015 1:45 pm, Andrew Rakowski wrote:

...

Thanks for the reply Jeremy. I thought about making a "httphead" test in the protocols.cfg file, and using the "curl" utility to do what BigBrother used to do, but I don't see how to pass the URL to the test.

Is there some implicit passing of test URL to these protocols.cfg defined tests (like the string from the hosts.cfg file is stuck at the end of the invoked command taken from protocols.cfg?) I don't see any examples in the file, and it looks like everything just sends canned strings.

In this case, I'd want to run the "curl" command like this:

 /usr/bin/curl -g -s -S -m 45 -I -k --connect-timeout 15

with the URL taken from the hosts.cfg line, which looks like this:

 0.0.0.0         xyz-web2 # noconn --timeout=15

https://xyz.somewhere.com/xyz/portal/user/anon/js_peid/123456789/panel/Main/...

so that webpage could be tested by the curl utility, which is configured to send only a "HEAD" request to the web server (the '-I' option.) That curl command is what was being used in BigBrother.

Cheers,

-Andrew

On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Jeremy Laidman wrote:

...

On 10 April 2015 at 11:19, Andrew Rakowski <landrew at pnnl.gov> wrote: I didn't understand why nobody was complaining previously, until I saw that BigBro was set up to use the "curl" command with the "-I" option (aka the "--head" option) to send a "HEAD" request to the server. The BigBro web test used this setting:

This was one of the problems with BigBro - it forked to external programs to do the probes which doesn't scale, whereas xymonnet does it all internally.

Alas, xymonnet sends either a POST or a GET request, and this cannot be modified by configuration.

I can see two options for you. One is to do your own curl/wget call with a HEAD request, in a script. The other option is to define your own "http" protocol definition in protocols.cfg and use that. You would probably need to name it something other than "http" otherwise xymonnet will use its internal protocol code rather than what's defined in protocols.cfg.

J

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On 4/16/2015 5:00 PM, Andrew Rakowski wrote: ...

For the time being, I guess I'll just have to make a special case external script to test using curl (and try to convince the developers that they should always have a 'test' URL that doesn't take large amounts of processing just to verify things are working...)

I would expect that this is something the business owner of the application would want to have included in their design requirements.

"A page which, when requested, exercises the web server, application engine, authentication services, and basic database functions."

Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston 907-465-8591 John.Thurston at alaska.gov Enterprise Technology Services Department of Administration State of Alaska

On 14 April 2015 at 06:45, Andrew Rakowski <landrew at pnnl.gov> wrote:

Thanks for the reply Jeremy. I thought about making a "httphead" test in the protocols.cfg file, and using the "curl" utility to do what BigBrother used to do,

You would do one or the other.

but I don't see how to pass the URL to the test.

To use protocols.cfg, you would have to specify it in the protocols.cfg file. For example: [httphead] port 80 send "HEAD /xyz/portal/user/anon/js_peid/123456790/panel/Main/template/content\r\nHost: xyz.somewhere.com\r\n\r\n" expect "HTTP/1.1 200 OK" Actually, my protocols.cfg (and probably the installed version) already had a similar definition as [cuspd] which queries a CUPS protocol print server, which is essentially a web service running on port 631.

Is there some implicit passing of test URL to these protocols.cfg defined tests (like the string from the hosts.cfg file is stuck at the end of the invoked command taken from protocols.cfg?)

No. But you can do this with a script. For example: 0.0.0.0 xyz-web2 # noconn HTTPHEAD:TIMEOUT=15,URL= https://xyz.somewhere.com/xyz/portal/user/anon/js_peid/123456789/panel/Main/... Then: #!/bin/sh [ "$XYMONHOME" ] || exit 1 TEST=httphead CURL=/usr/bin/curl $XYMONHOME/bin/xymongrep "HTTPHEAD:*" | sed 's/ *# */ /;s/ dialup//;s/ testip//'| while read IP HOST STRING; do PART=`IFS=":"; set - $STRING; shift; echo "$*"` ( IFS=, set - $PART TIMEOUT=15 URL="" while [ "$1" ]; do VAR=`IFS="="; set - $1; echo $1` VAL=`IFS="="; set - $1; shift; echo "$*"` case "$VAR" in TIMEOUT) TIMEOUT="$VAL";; URL) URL="$VAL";; esac shift done RESULT=`$CURL -g -s -S -m 45 -I -k --connect-timeout $TIMEOUT "$URL" 2>&1` [ $? -eq 0 ] && COL=green || COL=red #printf "status $HOST.$TEST $COL `date` HEAD status $COL\n\n$RESULT\n" | $XYMON $XYMSRV "@" printf "status $HOST.$TEST $COL `date` HEAD status $COL\n\n$RESULT\n" ) done