Background

It is always a good idea to monitor the server hardware, in many cases the root cause of the probblem is hardware related like: a fan stops and the temperature gets to high, dust in the machine makes it to hot, disks that fails, memory corruption and so on.  This article will describe howto enable hardware monitoring on a HP Proliant running CentOS Linux and then howto collect the data with Nagios or op5 Monitor. The procedure is the same with RedHat Enterprise Linux and similiar with Suse Enterprise server.

The HP manuals and information is bloated with irrelevant information and I had to struggle several hours, ask collegues to get it running. I hope this blog article will help others to get monitoring of HP Proliant using HP Insight Manager easier to setup.

Installing the software on the target system

You need two packages from HP and can be downloaded from hp.com under "Support & Drivers". Search your hardware plattform and correct operating system:

• ProLiant Support Pack for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (i686)  The latest Proliant Support Package 2010-03-02 name is psp-8.25.rhel5.i686.en.tar.gz
• HP System Health Application and Insight Management Agents for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86). The latest name is hpasm-8.0.0-173.rhel5.i386.rpm

Install kernel source code and rpm tools:

# yum install kernel-devel rpm-build rpm-devel
 

Proliant Support Package is not supported on CentOS so you have to let the installer think it is a RedHat system. If you have a RHEL system skip the next steps.

# cp /etc/redhat-release /etc/redhat-release.backup

# echo "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.4 (Tikanga)">/etc/redhat-release

Untar the Proliant Support Package

 # tar xzvf psp-8.25.rhel5.i686.en.tar.gz

Install the Proliant Support Package

# cd compaq/csp/linux/

# ./install825.sh

alot of text appears and some questions, answer them.

Install HP System Health Application and Insight Management Agents, and for some stupid reason it is in conflict with some other packages just installed. I solved it in a dirty way:

# rpm -i --force  --replacefiles --nodeps hpasm-8.0.0-173.rhel5.i386.rpm

Configure by running:

# hpa/etc/init.d/hpasm configure

and answer the questions.

Do not forget to restore /etc/redhat-release

# cp /etc/redhat-release.backup /etc/redhat-release

I did modify my /etc/snmp/snmp.conf to:

dlmod cmaX /usr/lib/libcmaX.so
rocommunity public
trapsink 10.1.1.20
syscontact peter@it-slav.net
syslocation PDC, Peters DataCenter

To test that you have installation and configuration work, run a snmpwalk from your Nagios or op5 Monitor host:

# snmpwalk -c public -v1  <ip-adress of your proliant box> 1.3.6.1.4.1.232

SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.1.1.0 = INTEGER: 1
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.1.2.0 = INTEGER: 23
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.1.3.0 = INTEGER: 2
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.1.0 = INTEGER: 30
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.2.1.1.1 = INTEGER: 1
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.2.1.2.1 = STRING: "Compaq Standard Equipment Agent for Linux"
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.2.1.3.1 = ""
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.2.1.4.1 = Hex-STRING: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
SNMPv2-SMI::enterprises.232.1.2.1.4.2.1.5.1 = STRING: "To gather Standard Equipment data for Linux."

...
 

Install check_hpasm on the Nagios or op5 Monitor host

The check_hpasm can be downloaded from Console Labs.

Unpack the tarball

# tar xzvf check_hpasm-4.1.2.tar.gz

Configure and compile

# ./configure --prefix=/opt/plugins/custom/hp-insight --with-nagios-user=monitor --with-nagios-group=users --enable-perfdata

...

# make

...

# make install

Test

# /opt/plugins/custom/hp-insight/libexec/check_hpasm -H  -C public

OK - System: 'proliant dl360 g3', S/N: '7J31LMW6N01D', ROM: 'P31 01/28/2004', hardware working fine, da: 1 logical drives, 1 physical drives | fan_1=50% fan_2=50% temp_1_cpu=16;50;50 temp_2_cpu=15;65;65 temp_3_ioBoard=21;56;56 temp_4_cpu=20;65;65

Congratulations your plugin and hw monitoring works!

Configure Nagios or op5 Monitor
 

checkcommands.cfg

# command 'check_hpasm'
define command{
    command_name                   check_hpasm
    command_line                   $USER1$/custom/libexec/check_hpasm -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -C $ARG1$
    }

services.cfg

# service 'Insight Manager'
define service{
    use                            default-service
    host_name                      humpa
    service_description            Insight Manager
    check_command                  check_hpasm!public
    contact_groups                 call_it-slav,it-slav_jabber,it-slav_mail
    }

Screenshoot, using ninja

 Useful links

• op5, a systems and network management company
• op5 Monitor, an enterpise monitor system based on Nagios
• Ninja, Nagios is now just awesome
• Nagios, enterprise monitoring based on opensource
• Hp support & drivers, a place to start looking for the HP software used in this article

But today I noticed that I’ve only got 1 mail so something must be wrong. I did send an email from my job to my private adress and got the email back with the following message:

<peter@it-slav.net>: cannot update mailbox /var/mail/peter for user peter.
    error writing message: File too large

After some troubleshooting I found the following in the postfix documentation:

mailbox_size_limit (default: 51200000)

The maximal size of any local(8) individual mailbox or maildir file, or zero (no limit). In fact, this limits the size of any file that is written to upon local delivery, including files written by external commands that are executed by the local(8) delivery agent.

This limit must not be smaller than the message size limit.

So I changed the mailbox_size_limit = 0 and now everything seems alright again.

1. Installation

Run command yum install net-snmp-utils

[root@dull etc]# yum install net-snmp-utils
Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
Loading "dellsysidplugin" plugin
...
...
Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
 Package                 Arch       Version          Repository        Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
 net-snmp-utils          i386       1:5.3.1-24.el5_2.2  updates           182 k
Installing for dependencies:
 net-snmp                i386       1:5.3.1-24.el5_2.2  updates           698 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install      2 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 879 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y

Answer y

Downloading Packages:

(1/2): net-snmp-utils-5.3 100% |=========================| 182 kB    00:02
(2/2): net-snmp-5.3.1-24. 100% |=========================| 698 kB    00:06
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
 Installing: net-snmp                     ######################### [1/2]
  Installing: net-snmp-utils               ######################### [2/2]
Installed: net-snmp-utils.i386 1:5.3.1-24.el5_2.2
Dependency Installed: net-snmp.i386 1:5.3.1-24.el5_2.2
Complete!

Now it is installed

2. Configure

I’m careful so I do a backup of the snmpd config file.

[root@dull ~]# mv /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf.org 

Create a new config file.

[root@dull ~]# vi /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

rocommunity  public
syslocation  "PDC, Peters DataCenter"
syscontact  peter@it-slav.net

Start the snmpd service

[root@dull ~]# /etc/init.d/snmpd start

Do a snmpwalk to make sure it is working

[root@dull ~]# snmpwalk -v 1 -c public -O e 127.0.0.1
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: Linux dull 2.6.18-92.1.17.el5 #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 13:45:01 EST 2008 i686
SNMPv2-MIB::sysObjectID.0 = OID: NET-SNMP-MIB::netSnmpAgentOIDs.10
DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance = Timeticks: (16748) 0:02:47.48
SNMPv2-MIB::sysContact.0 = STRING: peter@it-slav.net
SNMPv2-MIB::sysName.0 = STRING: dull
SNMPv2-MIB::sysLocation.0 = STRING: "PDC, Peters DataCentral"
SNMPv2-MIB::sysORLastChange.0 = Timeticks: (1) 0:00:00.01
...

...

Yes, it is working

And finally, make sure snmpd starts next time you restart your machine.

[root@dull ~]# chkconfig snmpd on

3. Monitor example

Below is an example of how it looks using op5 Monitor a Nagios based Enterprise Monitor solution.

4. Useful links

• op5 Statistics, a cacti based graph tool
• op5 Monitor, an Enterprise Class Monitoring system based on Nagios
• Net-SNMP, an open source implementation of SNMP
• Cacti, an open source graph tool
• Nagios, the number 1 monitor tool

The script looks in /etc/fstab and compares it with the file systems mounted. If anything is missing, return CRITICAL and the name of the missed mountpoint. The script does not check that some system file systems are mounted i.e. /proc

I have uploaded this script to nagios exchange.

#!/bin/sh
#By peter@it-slav.net
#GPLv2

RESULT=0
TMPFILE=`mktemp /tmp/mount.XXXXXXXXXX`
FSTABMOUNTS=`grep -e '^#' -v /etc/fstab|grep -v  tmpfs |grep -v devpts|grep -v sysfs|grep -v proc|grep -v swap| awk '{print $2}'`
for i in $FSTABMOUNTS
do
        mountpoint $i > /dev/null
        if [ $? != "0" ]
        then
                echo -n "$i " >>$TMPFILE
                RESULT=2
        fi

done
#echo $RESULT
if [ $RESULT != "0" ]
then
        echo "is not mounted" >> $TMPFILE
        echo -n "CRITICAL: "
        cat $TMPFILE
else
        echo "OK: All disks mounted"
fi
rm $TMPFILE
exit $RESULT

Links:

• check_mounts.sh at Nagiosexchange
• op5 Monitor
• My other blog about the problems when I did a kernel upgrade

The first system is the machine that runs this blog. It runs Xen kernel with two virtual system.Luckily the webserver and database runs in Dom0. After update the system did not start, it seems like the Xen kernel is broken, so now I run non-Xen kernel.

The second system is my op5 Monitor system that monitor my environment. That changed the default kernel to Xen and that was broken, after chenged boot kernel to the non-Xen it works again.

The third machine is my fileserver, with a couple of disks. Two of the filesystems are XFS, and the new kernel did not have support for XFS so my large file systems could not be mounted. So I started the old kernel with XFS support.

This is not an acceptable behavior of an enteprise operating system.