Dear Henrik,
we run a moderately large xymon installation (> 8500 tests on > 850 hosts) and are lucky to also employ Axel Beckert, one of Debian's xymon package maintainers. This year we can (and have to) finally make our first steps into IPv6 territory and we decided early on that a working monitoring system is very high on the list. We are pretty happy with xymon and have repeatedly contributed to its well-being in the past. Hence we would very much like to stick with xymon also for our IPv6 monitoring. Reading the mailing lists, we got the impression that the upcoming 4.4/5.0 will be v6-ready and has progressed nicely. So we installed trunk [1] on a test server, and after writing a small patch to lib/loadhosts_file.c [2] we tried it in our IPv6 test net. Unfortunately we hit several road blocks (one of them being xymonnet2 intermittently crashing and not returning any output), which is just fair considering we're using unreleased trunk code. However, it leads us to the following questions:
do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time (other than "Version 5 is currently (August 2012) under development, and is expected to be released later in 2012)"?
if you're in need of a) testers, b) code contributions or even c) financial incentives, we might be able to help out
We are now at a crossroads where we have to decide whether to stay with (v6-ready) xymon or to switch to some other monitoring system. As already said: we'd like to stick around, but we do need v6 support at some point in the not-too-distant future.
Thank you very much and kind regards, -Christian
[1] http://sourceforge.net/p/xymon/code/7197/tree/trunk/ [2] 320c320,322 < sprintf(newitem->ip, "%d.%d.%d.%d", ip1, ip2, ip3, ip4);
char ipaddr[16]; sprintf(ipaddr, "%d.%d.%d.%d", ip1, ip2, ip3, ip4); newitem->ip = ipaddr;
--
Dr. Christian Herzog <herzog at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 26 68
IT Services Group, HPT H 8 voice: +41 44 633 39 50
Department of Physics, ETH Zurich
8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
Hi Christian,
On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
- do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time (other than "Version 5 is currently (August 2012) under development, and is expected to be released later in 2012)"?
Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown, since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn should be possible.
- if you're in need of a) testers, b) code contributions or even c) financial incentives, we might be able to help out
I'll definitely need testers, and code contributions are always welcome.
Regards, Henrik
Dear Henrik,
thanks a lot for this encouraging update. We'll stand by with our test setup, ready to get our hands dirty.
best, -Christian
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 07:50:13AM +0200, Henrik Størner wrote:
Hi Christian,
On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
- do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time (other than "Version 5 is currently (August 2012) under development, and is expected to be released later in 2012)"?
Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown, since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn should be possible.
- if you're in need of a) testers, b) code contributions or even c) financial incentives, we might be able to help out
I'll definitely need testers, and code contributions are always welcome.
Regards, Henrik
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
--
Dr. Christian Herzog <herzog at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 26 68
IT Services Group, HPT H 8 voice: +41 44 633 39 50
Department of Physics, ETH Zurich
8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
On 24-07-2013 08:07, Christian Herzog wrote:
On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
- do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time
Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown, since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn should be possible.
thanks a lot for this encouraging update. We'll stand by with our test setup, ready to get our hands dirty.
Okay .... if you really want to get dirty, then I have some code waiting for all of you to test. Head over to http://www.xymon.com/misc/ and grab the 4.3.99.<date> tar-file.
(Or grab the latest trunk from Sourceforge's SVN archive).
NOTE: I strongly recommend that you run this in a test setup - or at least be prepared to break your current installation. At least, backup your xymon installation directory and the *.chk files in the server/tmp/ directory.
Building it should be well-known, except that you need two more libraries: The new network test module uses an SQLite3 database internally, and xymond now needs the "zlib" library - so those must be installed, including any "developer" packages.
On Debian, I have the libsqlite3-0:amd64, libsqlite3-dev:amd64 and sqlite3 packages for SQLite3; and the zlib1g:amd64 and zlib1g-dev:amd64 packages for zlib.
make - make install
Make sure that the xymond/etcfiles/protocols2.cfg file is installed in you server/etc/ directory. The old protocols.cfg is no longer used.
Make sure the server/bin/fping4 and fping6 programs are suid-root; if not then "chown 0 server/bin/fping*; chmod u+s server/bin/fping*" as root.
Start Xymon and see what happens :-o
The new network module runs as a daemon, so don't be surprised that it runs all the time. xymonnet2 does the normal network checks (tcp tests), and the "netmodule ping" job handles all of the ping checks.
"ping" status is now reported in a "ping" column. This will change before the final release.
If a host has both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, then Xymon will test the IPv4 address only. You cannot change that right now.
SSL certificate status is not yet there. We have the data, but don't generate the status update yet.
LDAP- and RPC-checks are not implemented yet.
Some of the more exotic details are also missing, e.g. pinging hosts with multiple IP's.
What I am most interested in right now is - does it work at all ? Does it crash ? You'll probably need to add "--debug" options to the new commands, but be warned: There's a lot of debug output.
Now a bit of personal news: Those of you who have followed Xymon development over the years may know that I have been working for CSC while writing Xymon. Xymon has been used a lot at CSC here in Copenhagen, so doing special Xymon customisation was also part of my work there.
But times are changing, and I have decided to leave CSC. On Thursday I start in a new job at KMD - a local danish IT company providing IT services for a lot of danish public-sector companies, but also moving in to the general outsourcing business.
My new employer knows about the work I do on Xymon, and although I probably won't be able to work in Xymon as part of my employment, it will continue to grow as the Open Source project it has always been.
Regards, Henrik
Good morning Henrik,
thanks for the good news. I'm compiling the new version as we speak. I'll keep you posted as we progress.
cheers, -Christian
On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 08:18:29AM +0200, Henrik Størner wrote:
On 24-07-2013 08:07, Christian Herzog wrote:
On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
- do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time
Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown, since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn should be possible.
thanks a lot for this encouraging update. We'll stand by with our test setup, ready to get our hands dirty.
Okay .... if you really want to get dirty, then I have some code waiting for all of you to test. Head over to http://www.xymon.com/misc/ and grab the 4.3.99.<date> tar-file.
(Or grab the latest trunk from Sourceforge's SVN archive).
NOTE: I strongly recommend that you run this in a test setup - or at least be prepared to break your current installation. At least, backup your xymon installation directory and the *.chk files in the server/tmp/ directory.
Building it should be well-known, except that you need two more libraries: The new network test module uses an SQLite3 database internally, and xymond now needs the "zlib" library - so those must be installed, including any "developer" packages.
On Debian, I have the libsqlite3-0:amd64, libsqlite3-dev:amd64 and sqlite3 packages for SQLite3; and the zlib1g:amd64 and zlib1g-dev:amd64 packages for zlib.
make - make install
Make sure that the xymond/etcfiles/protocols2.cfg file is installed in you server/etc/ directory. The old protocols.cfg is no longer used.
Make sure the server/bin/fping4 and fping6 programs are suid-root; if not then "chown 0 server/bin/fping*; chmod u+s server/bin/fping*" as root.
Start Xymon and see what happens :-o
The new network module runs as a daemon, so don't be surprised that it runs all the time. xymonnet2 does the normal network checks (tcp tests), and the "netmodule ping" job handles all of the ping checks.
"ping" status is now reported in a "ping" column. This will change before the final release.
If a host has both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, then Xymon will test the IPv4 address only. You cannot change that right now.
SSL certificate status is not yet there. We have the data, but don't generate the status update yet.
LDAP- and RPC-checks are not implemented yet.
Some of the more exotic details are also missing, e.g. pinging hosts with multiple IP's.
What I am most interested in right now is - does it work at all ? Does it crash ? You'll probably need to add "--debug" options to the new commands, but be warned: There's a lot of debug output.
Now a bit of personal news: Those of you who have followed Xymon development over the years may know that I have been working for CSC while writing Xymon. Xymon has been used a lot at CSC here in Copenhagen, so doing special Xymon customisation was also part of my work there.
But times are changing, and I have decided to leave CSC. On Thursday I start in a new job at KMD - a local danish IT company providing IT services for a lot of danish public-sector companies, but also moving in to the general outsourcing business.
My new employer knows about the work I do on Xymon, and although I probably won't be able to work in Xymon as part of my employment, it will continue to grow as the Open Source project it has always been.
Regards, Henrik
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
--
Dr. Christian Herzog <herzog at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 26 68
IT Services Group, HPT H 8 voice: +41 44 633 39 50
Department of Physics, ETH Zurich
8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
Hi Henrik,
executive summary: wow!
We dove right in, and things are looking pretty good. Stuff we noticed:
make install:
- error: chown xymon /opt/xymon/server/etc/protocols.cfg - cannot access `/opt/xymon/server/etc/protocols.cfg': No such file or directory, lines 136f in xymonnet/Makefile - obsolete protocols.cfg
- error: chown xymon /opt/xymon/server/ext/* - cannot access `/opt/xymon/server/ext/*': No such file or directory
after that, we quickly managed to get it up and running with some of our hosts and also an IPv6-only machine. Our patch [1] is no longer needed. The new client sometimes complains in the logs: xymon 4.3.99 Usage: /opt/xymon/client/bin/xymon [--debug] [--merge] [--proxy=http://ip.of.the.proxy:port/] RECIPIENT DATA RECIPIENT: IP-address, hostname or URL DATA: Message to send, or "-" to read from stdin
but still reports just fine. Other than that: great work! This is amazing progress compared to the last trunk version we tried.
We'll continue to play around with it and let you know what our experiences are.
thanks, -Christian
Den 30.07.2013 09:58, Christian Herzog skrev:
executive summary: wow!
We dove right in, and things are looking pretty good.
Thanks, I am obviously delighted that it works for you. Makes me a bit more confident about it - having things work in the couple of setups I have is one thing, having it work in "some random location" is another.
Stuff we noticed:
Details, details ... :-) I'll get that cleaned up.
Regards, Henrik
Hi Henrik,
we have cloned our production monitoring to 4.3.99-20130730 and have almost all hosts report to both servers in order to get real life data and also added some IPv6-only hosts for good measure: https://phd-nfsv4.ethz.ch/xymon/ Within experimental error the monitoring results are very similar to production 4.3.0-0.beta2, which is a really good sign!
What we did notice:
- after several minutes, xymonnet2 gets stuck at 100% CPU usage and doesn't report any longer, rendering all net tests purple. If you kill it, a new one gets started, buying you another 5-10 minutes. Neither --debug nor strace in the task file showed me anything uselful, it just goes belly up
- ./xymon.sh restart fails to get rid of running xymonnet processes
- cosmetics: IPv6 ping tests are somewhat confusing as they add :0 (port?) to the end of the v6 address: 2a01:4f8:162:464::113:0 (see https://phd-nfsv4.ethz.ch/xymon-cgi/svcstatus.sh?HOST=daduke&SERVICE=ping)
other than that, we're really amazed by how far it's come! Once xymonnet runs reliably we see no major obstacle with the new code.
thanks a lot, -Christian
--
Dr. Christian Herzog <herzog at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 26 68
IT Services Group, HPT H 8 voice: +41 44 633 39 50
Department of Physics, ETH Zurich
8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
Best of luck in your new role Henrik
regards Padraig Lennon
-----Original Message----- From: Xymon [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Henrik Størner Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 7:18 AM To: xymon at xymon.com Subject: [Xymon] Version 5 with IPv6 - anyone for testing? And some news ...
On 24-07-2013 08:07, Christian Herzog wrote:
On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
- do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time
Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown, since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn should be possible.
thanks a lot for this encouraging update. We'll stand by with our test setup, ready to get our hands dirty.
Okay .... if you really want to get dirty, then I have some code waiting for all of you to test. Head over to http://www.xymon.com/misc/ and grab the 4.3.99.<date> tar-file.
(Or grab the latest trunk from Sourceforge's SVN archive).
NOTE: I strongly recommend that you run this in a test setup - or at least be prepared to break your current installation. At least, backup your xymon installation directory and the *.chk files in the server/tmp/ directory.
Building it should be well-known, except that you need two more libraries: The new network test module uses an SQLite3 database internally, and xymond now needs the "zlib" library - so those must be installed, including any "developer" packages.
On Debian, I have the libsqlite3-0:amd64, libsqlite3-dev:amd64 and sqlite3 packages for SQLite3; and the zlib1g:amd64 and zlib1g-dev:amd64 packages for zlib.
make - make install
Make sure that the xymond/etcfiles/protocols2.cfg file is installed in you server/etc/ directory. The old protocols.cfg is no longer used.
Make sure the server/bin/fping4 and fping6 programs are suid-root; if not then "chown 0 server/bin/fping*; chmod u+s server/bin/fping*" as root.
Start Xymon and see what happens :-o
The new network module runs as a daemon, so don't be surprised that it runs all the time. xymonnet2 does the normal network checks (tcp tests), and the "netmodule ping" job handles all of the ping checks.
"ping" status is now reported in a "ping" column. This will change before the final release.
If a host has both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, then Xymon will test the IPv4 address only. You cannot change that right now.
SSL certificate status is not yet there. We have the data, but don't generate the status update yet.
LDAP- and RPC-checks are not implemented yet.
Some of the more exotic details are also missing, e.g. pinging hosts with multiple IP's.
What I am most interested in right now is - does it work at all ? Does it crash ? You'll probably need to add "--debug" options to the new commands, but be warned: There's a lot of debug output.
Now a bit of personal news: Those of you who have followed Xymon development over the years may know that I have been working for CSC while writing Xymon. Xymon has been used a lot at CSC here in Copenhagen, so doing special Xymon customisation was also part of my work there.
But times are changing, and I have decided to leave CSC. On Thursday I start in a new job at KMD - a local danish IT company providing IT services for a lot of danish public-sector companies, but also moving in to the general outsourcing business.
My new employer knows about the work I do on Xymon, and although I probably won't be able to work in Xymon as part of my employment, it will continue to grow as the Open Source project it has always been.
Regards, Henrik
Xymon mailing list Xymon at xymon.com http://lists.xymon.com/mailman/listinfo/xymon
participants (3)
-
henrik＠hswn.dk
-
herzog＠phys.ethz.ch
-
Padraig.Lennon＠pioneerinvestments.com