[hobbit] Questions about migrating from BB
----- "Ryan Novosielski" <novosirj at umdnj.edu> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Greg Hubbard wrote:
The CLIENT tag is used to tell the Xymon server how the incoming client data will be tagged. You use this when your Xymon agent and the Xymon server do not agree on which name to use -- usually because one of the entries has FQDN and the other does not. This is the "cheap fix" for "ghost" clients -- see the ghost report.
That's what I figured. On Solaris, it seems I run into this on all of the hosts. uname -n always seems to return a short name. In fact, it does not appear as if Solaris has much of a concept of a domain name,
bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com > uname -n merga.ourdomain.com bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com > hostname merga.telkomsa.net bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com > uname -a SunOS merga.ourdomain.com 5.9 Generic_117171-07 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210
(Of course, don't try 'hostname -d').
and I can't figure if I'm supposed to keep the full name as the hostname or not. Hasn't seemed to matter.
Some of the columns you are talking about (bbgen, hobbitd, etc.) are implicit tests that are run no matter what on the Xymon server. Xymon inherits a lot of the BB communications architecture but extends it in many ways. The BBDISPLAY machine(s) will have "bbgen" tests -- this is what creates the Web pages. The Xymon server will have the "hobbitd" test -- this is what processes incoming data from Xymon clients. BBNET machines will have the "bbtest" column -- this shows how network tests are working.
They were missing, but apparently what happened is that at least the "bbgen" tests were going into the bit running with a misspelled name, so at least I know what is going on with them now. I guess these are "client" tests on a Xymon server.
On a simple environment (the only kind I know) you will have all three of these on your Xymon server and not on anything else. My *guess* is that if you know how to break up BBDISPLY and BBNET you might see different tests associated with each host.
Apparently not, and in my opinion, this is somewhat broken, unless I'm misconfiguring something. Xymon appears to only have one notion of a "server." If you're running a network test machine, it asks you for your server name (example pasted):
BBSERVERHOSTNAME="xymon.umdnj.edu" # The hostname of your server BBSERVERIP="130.219.34.102" # The IP-address of your server. Use the real one, not 127.0.0.1 . BBSERVEROS="sunos" # The operating system of your server. linux,freebsd,solaris,hpux,aix,osf
The "bbtest" test, with a solely "BBNET" machine configured this way, appears as if it comes from the "BBNET" machine (status message received from IP is the "BBNET" machine), but the test shows up under whatever server name is defined in those above variables in hobbitserver.cfg.
You only set *one* of those, BBSERVERHOSTNAME, which it uses in the status message, which it sends to BBSERVERIP.
See e.g. line 2321 of bbnet/bbtest-net.c sprintf(msgline, "status %s.%s %s %s\n\n", xgetenv("MACHINE"), egocolumn, colorname(color), timestamp);
(In lib/environ.c, MACHINE is created from MACHINEDOTS if MACHINE does not exist, and by default MACHINEDOTS=$BBSERVERHOSTNAME in hobbitserver.cfg).
I guess the descriptions of BBSERVERHOSTNAME and BBSERVERIP could be improved in hobbitserver.cfg and hobbitserver.cfg(5), and BBSERVERHOSTNAME could possibly default to the machine's hostname instead ...
BBSERVERHOSTNAME is the name of the host running that instance of xymon as you would like it to be displayed in any messages about the xymon processes, and BBSEVERIP is the IP of the Xymon server (hobbitd or bbproxy) to which all status messages should be sent.
I might be able to fix some of these issues in future.
If you set that server name to the name of the BBNET machine, as I expected I was supposed to do initially, you get "connection refused" errors, as it tries to connect to itself and cannot as it's not running the server component that listens on the port.
I'm starting to believe that while you CAN separate the BBNET and BBDISPLAY nodes with Xymon, no one is really doing it and it doesn't work that cleanly.
I've been doing it since hobbit-4.1.0, and I have had no problems (with more complex setups including bbproxy to have a staged migration from bb).
Regards, Buchan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Buchan Milne wrote:
----- "Ryan Novosielski" <novosirj at umdnj.edu> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Greg Hubbard wrote:
The CLIENT tag is used to tell the Xymon server how the incoming client data will be tagged. You use this when your Xymon agent and the Xymon server do not agree on which name to use -- usually because one of the entries has FQDN and the other does not. This is the "cheap fix"
for
"ghost" clients -- see the ghost report. That's what I figured. On Solaris, it seems I run into this on all of the hosts. uname -n always seems to return a short name. In fact, it does not appear as if Solaris has much of a concept of a domain name,
bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com uname -n merga.ourdomain.com bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com hostname merga.telkomsa.net bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com uname -a SunOS merga.ourdomain.com 5.9 Generic_117171-07 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210
(Of course, don't try 'hostname -d').
Have you been able to find in writing anyplace that the hostname is supposed to be the FQDN? I haven't been able to, and I've seen a lot of references to the short name belonging in /etc/hostname.<if> and /etc/nodename. Most OS' separate hostname and domain name out, but it would seem that using the FQDN would at least fix the problems that require me to use CLIENT: on Solaris machines in my setup.
Apparently not, and in my opinion, this is somewhat broken, unless I'm misconfiguring something. Xymon appears to only have one notion of a "server." If you're running a network test machine, it asks you for your server name (example pasted):
BBSERVERHOSTNAME="xymon.umdnj.edu" # The hostname of your server BBSERVERIP="130.219.34.102" # The IP-address of your server. Use the real one, not 127.0.0.1 . BBSERVEROS="sunos" # The operating system of your server. linux,freebsd,solaris,hpux,aix,osf
The "bbtest" test, with a solely "BBNET" machine configured this way, appears as if it comes from the "BBNET" machine (status message received from IP is the "BBNET" machine), but the test shows up under whatever server name is defined in those above variables in hobbitserver.cfg.
You only set *one* of those, BBSERVERHOSTNAME, which it uses in the status message, which it sends to BBSERVERIP.
See e.g. line 2321 of bbnet/bbtest-net.c sprintf(msgline, "status %s.%s %s %s\n\n", xgetenv("MACHINE"), egocolumn, colorname(color), timestamp);
(In lib/environ.c, MACHINE is created from MACHINEDOTS if MACHINE does not exist, and by default MACHINEDOTS=$BBSERVERHOSTNAME in hobbitserver.cfg).
I guess the descriptions of BBSERVERHOSTNAME and BBSERVERIP could be improved in hobbitserver.cfg and hobbitserver.cfg(5), and BBSERVERHOSTNAME could possibly default to the machine's hostname instead ...
BBSERVERHOSTNAME is the name of the host running that instance of xymon as you would like it to be displayed in any messages about the xymon processes, and BBSEVERIP is the IP of the Xymon server (hobbitd or bbproxy) to which all status messages should be sent.
OK, this makes a huge difference. Note that even the description is written to re-inforce that these both should be the same value:
The hostname of your server
The IP-address of your server. Use the real one, not 127.0.0.1 .
...assuming that "your server"="your server", as well as the fact that both say BBSERVER*=BBSERVER*. That is one thing that I'd alluded to earlier: the terminology that BB uses to call the BBDISPLAY machine and the BBNET machine make it clear what to put in the various config options. If they both reside on the same machine, it's obvious what to do, as opposed to the reverse (if they both say one machine and you've got two).
I might be able to fix some of these issues in future.
Should be fairly simple documentation patches. I'm no programmer, but if that's necessary, I should be able to handle some of it.
If you set that server name to the name of the BBNET machine, as I expected I was supposed to do initially, you get "connection refused" errors, as it tries to connect to itself and cannot as it's not running the server component that listens on the port.
I'm starting to believe that while you CAN separate the BBNET and BBDISPLAY nodes with Xymon, no one is really doing it and it doesn't work that cleanly.
I've been doing it since hobbit-4.1.0, and I have had no problems (with more complex setups including bbproxy to have a staged migration from bb).
Thrilled to stand corrected. The changes I've made so far have made a difference. I guess we'll see going forward if I run into anything else. I'm running 4.2.3 incidentally, so I suppose it's possible that the latest changes are not in my version if any have been made.
---- _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ |Y#| | | |\/| | \ |\ | | |Ryan Novosielski - Systems Programmer II |$&| |__| | | |__/ | \| _| |novosirj at umdnj.edu - 973/972.0922 (2-0922) \__/ Univ. of Med. and Dent.|IST/CST - NJMS Medical Science Bldg - C630 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iEYEARECAAYFAkqzqmYACgkQmb+gadEcsb4WMwCfWFWRhqIy+PKO/H9KYS/p0LJ/ DuMAoLRhbY33h0/ElWTOi2nbmzrEB9PA =9tju -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Pretty sure FQDN or not is asked when you compile the server.
Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373
"When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth." --- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Ryan Novosielski <novosirj at umdnj.edu>wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Buchan Milne wrote:
----- "Ryan Novosielski" <novosirj at umdnj.edu> wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
Greg Hubbard wrote:
The CLIENT tag is used to tell the Xymon server how the incoming client data will be tagged. You use this when your Xymon agent and the Xymon server do not agree on which name to use -- usually because one of the entries has FQDN and the other does not. This is the "cheap fix"
for
"ghost" clients -- see the ghost report. That's what I figured. On Solaris, it seems I run into this on all of the hosts. uname -n always seems to return a short name. In fact, it does not appear as if Solaris has much of a concept of a domain name,
bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com uname -n merga.ourdomain.com bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com hostname merga.telkomsa.net bgmilne at merga.ourdomain.com uname -a SunOS merga.ourdomain.com 5.9 Generic_117171-07 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210
(Of course, don't try 'hostname -d').
Have you been able to find in writing anyplace that the hostname is supposed to be the FQDN? I haven't been able to, and I've seen a lot of references to the short name belonging in /etc/hostname.<if> and /etc/nodename. Most OS' separate hostname and domain name out, but it would seem that using the FQDN would at least fix the problems that require me to use CLIENT: on Solaris machines in my setup.
Apparently not, and in my opinion, this is somewhat broken, unless I'm misconfiguring something. Xymon appears to only have one notion of a "server." If you're running a network test machine, it asks you for your server name (example pasted):
BBSERVERHOSTNAME="xymon.umdnj.edu" # The hostname of your server BBSERVERIP="130.219.34.102" # The IP-address of your server. Use the real one, not 127.0.0.1 . BBSERVEROS="sunos" # The operating system of your server. linux,freebsd,solaris,hpux,aix,osf
The "bbtest" test, with a solely "BBNET" machine configured this way, appears as if it comes from the "BBNET" machine (status message received from IP is the "BBNET" machine), but the test shows up under whatever server name is defined in those above variables in hobbitserver.cfg.
You only set *one* of those, BBSERVERHOSTNAME, which it uses in the status message, which it sends to BBSERVERIP.
See e.g. line 2321 of bbnet/bbtest-net.c sprintf(msgline, "status %s.%s %s %s\n\n", xgetenv("MACHINE"), egocolumn, colorname(color), timestamp);
(In lib/environ.c, MACHINE is created from MACHINEDOTS if MACHINE does not exist, and by default MACHINEDOTS=$BBSERVERHOSTNAME in hobbitserver.cfg).
I guess the descriptions of BBSERVERHOSTNAME and BBSERVERIP could be improved in hobbitserver.cfg and hobbitserver.cfg(5), and BBSERVERHOSTNAME could possibly default to the machine's hostname instead ...
BBSERVERHOSTNAME is the name of the host running that instance of xymon as you would like it to be displayed in any messages about the xymon processes, and BBSEVERIP is the IP of the Xymon server (hobbitd or bbproxy) to which all status messages should be sent.
OK, this makes a huge difference. Note that even the description is written to re-inforce that these both should be the same value:
The hostname of your server
The IP-address of your server. Use the real one, not 127.0.0.1 .
...assuming that "your server"="your server", as well as the fact that both say BBSERVER*=BBSERVER*. That is one thing that I'd alluded to earlier: the terminology that BB uses to call the BBDISPLAY machine and the BBNET machine make it clear what to put in the various config options. If they both reside on the same machine, it's obvious what to do, as opposed to the reverse (if they both say one machine and you've got two).
I might be able to fix some of these issues in future.
Should be fairly simple documentation patches. I'm no programmer, but if that's necessary, I should be able to handle some of it.
If you set that server name to the name of the BBNET machine, as I expected I was supposed to do initially, you get "connection refused" errors, as it tries to connect to itself and cannot as it's not running the server component that listens on the port.
I'm starting to believe that while you CAN separate the BBNET and BBDISPLAY nodes with Xymon, no one is really doing it and it doesn't work that cleanly.
I've been doing it since hobbit-4.1.0, and I have had no problems (with more complex setups including bbproxy to have a staged migration from bb).
Thrilled to stand corrected. The changes I've made so far have made a difference. I guess we'll see going forward if I run into anything else. I'm running 4.2.3 incidentally, so I suppose it's possible that the latest changes are not in my version if any have been made.
---- _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ |Y#| | | |\/| | \ |\ | | |Ryan Novosielski - Systems Programmer II |$&| |__| | | |__/ | \| _| |novosirj at umdnj.edu - 973/972.0922 (2-0922) \__/ Univ. of Med. and Dent.|IST/CST - NJMS Medical Science Bldg - C630 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
iEYEARECAAYFAkqzqmYACgkQmb+gadEcsb4WMwCfWFWRhqIy+PKO/H9KYS/p0LJ/ DuMAoLRhbY33h0/ElWTOi2nbmzrEB9PA =9tju -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
To unsubscribe from the hobbit list, send an e-mail to hobbit-unsubscribe at hswn.dk
participants (3)
-
bgmilne＠staff.telkomsa.net
-
josh＠imaginenetworksllc.com
-
novosirj＠umdnj.edu