With my new and fancy HTC Desire I wanted to look at my Nagios or op5 Monitor status. I have found two apps Nagroid and NagMonDroid.

NagMonDroid did I not get working, probably because op5 Monitor only uses https as protocol.

Nagroid works like a charm:

The configuration is rather straightforward:

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

Background

At op5 we often run into BizTalk at customer sites as a business critical application. We have done an investigation and come up with a plugin  to monitor BizTalk.

To fully understand this document BizTalk knowledge is necessary.

Solution

op5 has developed a plugin that can monitor the following at a BizTalk server:

• Recieve locations – Verify that they are enabled.
• Send Ports – Verify that they are in Started state
• Group Overview – Catch messages in the message queue that are in state Suspended. The different type of messages are:
  • Dehydrated
  • Suspended
  • Queue

The plugin license is GPLv3 so it is free for any one to use and enhance.

Links

• check_biztalk the plugin that monitors BizTalk
• op5 Monitor Monitor solution based on Nagios
• Nagios free enterprise monitor software

I was reading the Swedish computer magazine, Tech World. There was an article about an appliance solution that could give a report about unused switch ports. The box PortIQ from Infoblox costs approximatly 10.000 Euro.

op5 has developed this feature at a customer site and is included with op5 Monitor, op5 has published the code as opensource.

This guide will describe howto get it running in op5 Monitor. op5 Monitor is vanilla Nagios with some addons so it should be no problem to follow this guide in a Nagios environment

Installation

1. Update your op5 Monitor or download the plugin and report script.

2. Create metadata for check_portstatus as $USER1$/check_portstatus -H $HOSTADDRESS$

in checkcommands.cfg:

# command 'check_portstatus'
define command{
    command_name                   check_portstatus
    command_line                   $USER1$/check_portstatus -H $HOSTADDRESS$
    }
 

3. mkdir /var/spool/check_portstatus

4. chown monitor:apache /var/spool/check_portstatus

5. cp /opt/monitor/op5/portstatus/portstatus.php /var/www/html/portstatus.php

6. Define your service i.e. services.cfg:

# service 'Portstatus'
define service{
    use                            default-service
    host_name                      gw
    service_description            Portstatus
    check_command                  check_portstatus
    }
 

The result

The screenshot below shows a Cisco switch with alot of unused ports.

Conclusions

This article shows how easy it is to modify Nagios and other opensource tools to give you what you want. Do not hesitate to contact me or op5 to help you enhance you Nagios or op5 installation.

Links

• op5
• op5 Monitor
• Nagios
• PortIQ appliance box from Infoblox
• Tech world

This article will describe how easy it is to integrate other tools to Nagios or op5 Monitor. I will use an example with a webshop where a business view of how the webshop is doing is implemented by using a GPL’d rule engine, NodeBrain. I have in an earlier article described the ruleset for this implementation but now I will show how the integration can be done.

Scenario

The scenario is a webshop with:

• 5 frontend webservers
• 2 application servers
• 3 databasservers

Management want to monitor how the webshop is doing. They do not want to know if a redundant part is down instead management want to have the overview of the webshop status.

A management consultant is hired and do an investigation and after a ridiculous amount of money the following rules are defined:

• Webserver rules
  • If 3 or more webserver works the webservice is OK
  • If 2 webservers works the webservice is WARNING
  • If 1 webserver or less is working the webservice is CRITICAL
• Applicationserver rules
  • If 1 or 2 application servers works the application layer is OK
  • If zero application servers works the application layer is CRITICAL
• Database server rules
  • If 2 or more database server works the database layer is OK
  • if 1 database server works the database layer is WARNING
  • If no database servers works the database layer is CRITICAL
•  The webserver layer, application layer and database layer should be viewed seperatly
• The total webshop status has the highest status value of webserver layer, application layer and database layer

I use Nagvis to illustrate the releationship between the layers.

Case 1

The picture shows when everything is fine:

Case 2

The rules in place:

• 2 webservers CRITICAL and the webserverlayer is OK
• 1 appserver CRITICAL and the application layer is OK
• 2 databases are down and the database layer is WARNING
• The total webshop status is WARNING because it has the highest status of the different layers

Case 3

Now it has been even worse:

• 4 webservers CRITICAL and the webserverlayer is CRITICAL
• 1 appserver CRITICAL and the application layer is OK
• 2 databases are down and the database layer is WARNING
• The total webshop status is CRITICAL because it has the highest status of the different layers

Conclusions

This article shows the power of Open Source and what is possible todo when integration different projects with each other. A solution like this with one of the Big Four (IBM, BMC, CA, HP) would have cost alot when it comes to license and highly specialised consultants had to be hirered.

Links

• Op5 A company that package and support enterprise class systems- and networkmanagement products
• NodeBrain, A powerful GPL’d rule engine
• Nagios, An enterprise class Monitoring sofware
• Nagvis, Nagios Visualization addon

Implementation

Hosts and services

The hosts and services are created:

• Webserver layer: 5 hosts each with 1 service
• Application layer: 2 hosts each with 1 service
• Database layer: 3 hosts each with 1 service
• Webshop layer: 1 host called webshopcontainer and 4 services: webserversstatus, appsserverstatus, dbserversstatus and webshop status. The services represent each layer in the model and webshop is the total status of the webshop.

To make it easy to control the status of all these devices I will use passive checks. So if I want to change the status of a service I just use the GUI and send in a passive check result. In real life active checks would have been used to monitor the different services.

The result showing Service Detail using op5 developed Nagios GUI Ninja:

The statechanges are sent to NodeBrain via an eventhandler that sends the NodeBrain commands via a namedpipe:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Event handler script for sending nagios data to nodebrain
#
# This script has these arguments $SERVICESTATEID$ $SERVICESTATETYPE$ $SERVICEATTEMPT$ $SERVICEDESC$ $HOSTNAME$
NODEBRAINPIPE=/opt/plugins/custom/nodebrainpipe
DATE=`date`
echo "$DATE SERVICESTATEID=$1 SERVICESTATETYPE=$2 SERVICEATTEMPT=$3 SERVICEDESC=$4 HOSTNAME=$5" >> /tmp/eventhandler_out

exit 0

The Nodebrainrules, that has all the logic and opens the namedpipe for commands:

#!/usr/local/bin/nb -d
#
-rm webshop.log
set log="webshop.log",out=".";
declare indata identity owner;
define webshop node pipe.server("indata@nodebrainpipe");

#Total rules
assert webshopstatus=0;
#If all serverstatus ok, the whole webshop is ok
define webshopok on(webserversstatus=0 and appserversstatus=0 and dbserversstatus=0) webshopstatus=0;
define webshopoksend on(webshopstatus=0):-./send_to_monitor.sh webshopstatus 0 "OK: Webshop is fine";
#If any serverstatus is critical the whole webshop is critical
define webshopscritical on(webserversstatus=2 or appserversstatus=2 or dbserversstatus=2) webshopstatus=2;
define webshopscriticalsend on(webshopstatus=2):-./send_to_monitor.sh webshopstatus 2 "CRITICAL: Webshop has serious problems";
#If not any serverstatuscritical and in warning, the whole shop is warning.
define webshopwarning on((!webserversstatus=2 and !appserversstatus=2 and !dbserversstatus=2) and (webserversstatus=1 or dbserversstatus=1)) webshopstatus=1;
define webshopwarningsend on(webshopstatus=1):-./send_to_monitor.sh webshopstatus 1 "WARNING: Webshop has some problems";
 

The NodeBrain rules runs this script when fired:

#!/bin/sh

HOSTNAME=webshopcontainer
SERVICEDESC=$1
STATUS=$2
MESSAGE=$3


now=`date +%s`
commandfile='/opt/monitor/var/rw/nagios.cmd'
/usr/bin/printf "[%lu] PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;$HOSTNAME;$SERVICEDESC;$STATUS;$MESSAGE\n" $now > $commandfile

The Nagios or op5 Monitor hosts.cfg

###############################################################################
#  Generated by op5 Monitor webconfiguration exporter
#
#  Exported 2009-10-22 19:33 by monitor
#

# host 'webshopcontainer'
define host{
    use                            Dummy-template
    host_name                      webshopcontainer
    alias                          webshopcontainer
    address                        127.0.0.1
    contact_groups                 support-group
    }
 

The Nagios or op5 Monitor services.cfg

###############################################################################
#  Generated by op5 Monitor webconfiguration exporter
#
#  Exported 2009-10-22 19:33 by monitor
#

# service 'webshopstatus'
define service{
    use                            Dummy-service-template
    host_name                      webshopcontainer
    service_description            webshopstatus
    servicegroups                  webshop
    flap_detection_enabled         0
    }

Next week, op5 will release the new Nagios GUI called Ninja. The license is GPL and several people has reported the GUI work perfectly well on vanilla Nagios. Ninja uses a database backend. Merlin, another op5 developed software feeds the Nagios information into the database.

Links:

• op5 -OpenSource based management software company
• Ninja- Nagios Is Now Just Awesome
• Merlin – Module for Effortless Redundancy and Loadbalancing In Nagios
• Try – Ninja GUI

Some screenshoots below:

 Geomap, based on google maps

Tactical overview, with widgets that could be dragged and dropped

Host details

Nagvis integration

http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/09/top-5-best-network-monitoring-tools/

By installing wp-cache the testcase went down to 0.4 seconds.

 The drawback is that my counter widget is getting updated every hour instead of every reload of the webpage.

Take a peak at some nice graphs showing that I stopped the increasing loading time and got a speedup from 7.5 seconds to 0.4 seconds:

http://wiki.nagios.org/index.php/SkypeSmsNotification

My recommendation is to use an GSM modem to send SMS, because if the network is down no SMS can be sent with this solution and SMS is normally used as an alternative alarm route.

Another aspect is that Skype is using propertiary protocols and that should be avoided.

I use MythTV quite frequently and noticed that it is instable when using sasc-ng as a decoder to decrypt encrypted DVB-T channels. So approximatly every third day the MythTVbackend server stops and need to be started again. I have wriiten an earlier article about howto monitor MythTV with Nagios or op5 Monitor so I get noticed that it has stopped. But I need to manually start it again. This article describe howto make Nagios or op5 Monitor to start a stopped MythTVbackend. It can be used for starting almost any service.

I have used the examples provided by Ethan at Nagios official documentation describing eventhandlers.

Normally it is not recommended to let a tool like Nagios or op5 Monitor start a service that has stopped, because it is probably a reason why the service has stopped and the correct procedure is to fix the root cause of the problem, not the symptom.

The MythTV backend runs on one machine called lala (after a character in Teletubbies) which is not the same as the Nagios or op5 Monitor server. I use nrpe to run the start script i.e.

 /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

There is several options here but I already setup the nrpe agent and it is simple to make Nagios or op5 Monitor to use nrpe to run a script.

Implementation

I used the script I found at Nagios documentation about eventhandlers as a base and modiied it slightly.

At my op5 Monitor machine

/opt/plugins/custom/restart-mythtv-lala.sh

#!/bin/sh
#
# Event handler script for restarting the mythTVbackend server on lala
#
# Note: This script will only restart the mythtvbackend if the service is
#       retried 2 times (in a "soft" state) or if the service somehow
#       manages to fall into a "hard" error state.
#

# What state is the mythbackend service in?
case "$1" in
OK)
	# The service just came back up, so don't do anything...
	;;
WARNING)
	# We don't really care about warning states, since the service is probably still running...
	;;
UNKNOWN)
	# We don't know what might be causing an unknown error, so don't do anything...
	;;
CRITICAL)
	# Aha!  The HTTP service appears to have a problem - perhaps we should restart the server...

	# Is this a "soft" or a "hard" state?
	case "$2" in

	# We're in a "soft" state, meaning that Nagios is in the middle of retrying the
	# check before it turns into a "hard" state and contacts get notified...
	SOFT)

		# What check attempt are we on?  We don't want to restart the web server on the first
		# check, because it may just be a fluke!
		case "$3" in

		# Wait until the check has been tried 3 times before restarting the web server.
		# If the check fails on the 4th time (after we restart the web server), the state
		# type will turn to "hard" and contacts will be notified of the problem.
		# Hopefully this will restart the web server successfully, so the 4th check will
		# result in a "soft" recovery.  If that happens no one gets notified because we
		# fixed the problem!
		2)
			echo "`date` Restarting mythtv service (2rd soft critical state)..." >> /tmp/mythtvstart
			# Call the init script to restart the mythbackend server
			#/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
			#date >> /tmp/mythtvstart
			/opt/plugins/check_nrpe -H lala -c start_mythtvbackend
			;;
			esac
		;;

	# The mythtvbackend service somehow managed to turn into a hard error without getting fixed.
	# It should have been restarted by the code above, but for some reason it didn't.
	# Let's give it one last try, shall we?
	# Note: Contacts have already been notified of a problem with the service at this
	# point (unless you disabled notifications for this service)
	HARD)
		echo "`date` Restarting mythtv service (hard state)..." >> /tmp/mythtvstart
		# Call the init script to restart the HTTPD server
		#/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart
		#date >> /tmp/mythtvstart
		/opt/plugins/check_nrpe -H lala -c start_mythtvbackend
		;;
	esac
	;;
esac
exit 0

/opt/monitor/misccomands.cfg

# command 'restart-mythtv-lala'
define command{
    command_name                   restart-mythtv-lala
    command_line                   /opt/plugins/custom/start-mythtv-lala.sh $SERVICESTATE$ $SERVICESTATETYPE$ $SERVICEATTEMPT$
    }

/opt/monitor/etc/services.cfg

# service 'Mythbackend'
define service{
    use                            default-service
    host_name                      lala
    service_description            Mythbackend
    check_command                  check_tcp!6543
    servicegroups                  MythTV,it-slav
    event_handler                  restart-mythtv-lala!$SERVICESTATE$ $SERVICESTATETYPE$ $SERVICEATTEMPT$
    contact_groups                 it-slav_sms,it-slav_jabber,it_slav_mail
    }

At my mythbackend machine lala

/etc/nrpe.d/mycommands.cfg
command[start_mythtvbackend]=/usr/bin/sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

/etc/sudoers
nobody ALL= (root) NOPASSWD:/etc/init.d/mythtv-backend start

Test

I stopped the mythtvbackend by running:

peter@lala:/etc/nrpe.d$ date
Mon Jun 15 20:40:55 CEST 2009
peter@lala:/etc/nrpe.d$ sudo /etc/init.d/mythtv-backend stop
 * Stopping MythTV server: mythbackend

And run

[root@op5 ~]# tail -f /tmp/mythtvstart
Mon Jun 15 20:47:09 CEST 2009 Restarting mythtv service (2rd soft critical state)...

YES it works!

Links:

• op5 Monitor a Nagios based supported enterprise Monitoring software.
• MythTV a free OpenSource Digital Video Recorder
• Nagios Open Source Monitoring

http://www.op5.org/community/projects/op5-plugins

The plugins is also located in a Git repository and can be checked out from:

http://git.op5.org/git/

• Tobias Oitiker gave a very good presentation about the linux kernel caching and described how it affected RRDtools.
• Markus Almroth, describes Sysnagios which did the opposite of most monitoring projects. Sysnagios decentralized the configuration of systems and network monitoring in a controlled way. I will come back to this topic in my blog.
• Per Åsberg talked about Ninja, a new GUI for Nagios, done by op5.
• Andriy Skuratov, talked about and demonstrated a new version of Nagvis with integrated Google Maps and other good stuff.
• Ethan Galstad the founder of Nagios announced Ninja as the new GUI for Nagios.

During the Nordic meet on Nagios I meet alot of interesting people, learned alot and had good food and drinks.

I hope to see you next year at Nordic Meet on Nagios 2010!!!

Ethan Galstad, the founder of Nagios has done a great job to open up the project and listening to input from the community.

Go to http://ideas.nagios.org/ and vote or add the functionality you want in Nagios so others can vote for it.

I have added the idea that Nagios should have a programable rule engine. When I worked as a Tivoli consultant it was essential to collect information from different sources and write som rules and present the result. All the enterprise monitoring solutions has a rule engine, i.e PEM (Patrol Enterprise Manager), T/EC (Tivoli Enterprise Console) and so on.

Read more at http://www.op5.org/community/projects/merlin

I have just finnished reading the excellent book "Learning Nagios 3.0" by Wojciech Kocjan.

The book does not require any prior knowledge about Nagios but having basic knowledge in programing, Unix or Linux is good. I as a rather experienced Nagios admin did get some valuable hints by reading it. I really liked the chapter about differences between Nagios 2 and 3.

The books target audience is sysadmins with Unix or LInux background that want to Monitor their environment by using Nagios. For a beginner going to the Nagios homepage the information is overvelming and it has to know where to start, a book like this is handy. The book often refers to specific topics at Nagios documentation for more info and that is good if the reader wants to dig deeper into that topic. Nagios homepage is an excellent reference but not a place to start when you want to use Nagios.

The examples are good and there is alot of illustrations, sometimes the illustrations is more complicated then the topic itself. The writer shows deep knowledge about the subject and has done a good job getting it technically correct, sometimeas a little bit academic i.e. it is more important to get everything correct then explaing something in a clear way.

I would recommend anybody interested in using Nagios to buy and read this book, especialy if you do not have any prior knowledge to Nagios.

Links:

• To buy Learning Nagios 3.0
• Example from the book, Chapter 7 passive checks and nsca

Valued Nagios users and Community members -

As many of you are already aware, there has been a great deal of
activity surrounding the recent announcement of a Nagios fork.  There's
a lot at stake with the outcome of this fork and its impact on the
Nagios community.  Rather than spend my time committing bug fixes to
CVS, I felt it was a much wiser choice for me to share my thoughts on
this issue with all of you.

You can read my thoughts on the fork and its impact on the future of
Nagios at http://community.nagios.org

A direct link to my main post:

http://community.nagios.org/2009/05/11/nagios-a-fork-in-the-road/

The short version is this - Nagios is alive, the community is vibrant,
and the future looks bright.

- Ethan Galstad, Creator/Father/Defender of Nagios

Andreas Ericson one of the members of the Nagios steering board has written this to his blog:

Some of you might know that a fork of Nagios has appeared recently. If you don’t, go read about it in the nagios-devel mailing list archives. They’re available on sourceforge somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to look for them right now.

Working for a company that makes a living out of supporting and writing addons for Nagios, I must say I’m a bit sad. Being an enthusiastic and optimistic guy, I must say I’m thrilled.

A couple of facts before we set off:

• The fork was instigated largely by german members of the community. It appears to have been spearheaded by a german company (though I don’t know this for sure) that makes its living selling customized Nagios solutions and/or support. I don’t know this for sure, but it sure looks as if that’s what’s happened.
• The german company have unlawfully used the Nagios trademark after being asked not to do so. It has also registered Nagios as a trademark in Germany, to which is a huge slap in the face of an opensource project. They are naturally not on the best of terms with Nagios’ founding father, Ethan, at the moment.
• Ethan has been absent working with the aforementioned lawsuit (or whatever it is a trademark violation results in when friendly talk is no longer enough), and also trying to put together a new webbased user interface for Nagios.
• Patches from all levels of the community have been erratically ignored during Ethan’s absence. Some were picked up, but as many or more slipped between the cracks.
• Ethan has always been the single person with commit access to the Nagios CVS (yuk) repository.
• The fork uses git to track their patches.

The community developers have voiced a complaint that they cite as the primary reason for the fork:

Nagios is not being developed fast and openly enough.

I agree with this, and I’m currently discussing with Ethan about expanding the developer-base. Unfortunately, the scarce resource “trust” is even scarcer for those developers who joined the fork, which leaves the available candidates rather few. Happily, I count myself among them, and apparently so does Ethan. He emailed me away from public channels asking if I’d be willing to become a core developer, and op5 has graciously given a tentative promise to devote one to two days per week to Nagios development / patch management. Nothing’s settled yet, but development has to continue even if the core maintainer takes a leave of absence, so one way or another, we’ll make sure this happens.

In a perfect world (ie, one where I get to decide everything ), here’s what will happen:

• Nagios incorporates the good changes that the fork produces.
• The benevolent but previously frustrated developers from the fork hop back to working on Nagios when they see it’s once again moving forward. They could actually do that by keeping on working on their fork, although that would set them apart from the Nagios community a bit rather than make them members of it.
• Nagios development picks up its pace and a new GUI is added to it which fulfills everyones wildest dreams.
• Nagios development moves to using git instead of CVS. Since git actually invites people to fork the code but makes it incredibly simple to merge those changes back to the pre-fork project again, there could be any number of forks and Nagios would be the grand total of the best of all of them. Who would win on that? Well, the Nagios users for a start, and Nagios itself, and Ethan, and every company making a living off of Nagios one way or another. So that’d be a win-win-win-win-win situation? I like it.

For those who wonder where I’m standing in all this, I’ll be working with Ethan to make the community developers happy while at the same time trying to prevent the community users from living through the confusion that a long-lived fork means. In the end, I hope Nagios becomes a better product with a stronger and better community backing it, which seems rather inevitable now that more people than ever are working frantically at making it so. Hopefully it results in a happy community where The Right People(tm) are part of a Nagios steering committee or some such.

Time will tell. It always does

This article describes how to monitor an IPSEC tunnel running on OpenBSD. I could not find any plugin already done so I created my own.

The pre req. for this article are:

• A working Nagios or op5 Monitor setup
• A IPsec VPN tunnel running on OpenBSD
• A working NRPE agent at the OpenBSD box

Theory

The way of getting the status of IPsec on OpenBSD is buy running:

ipsecctl -s s

esp tunnel from x.x.x.x to y.y.y.y spi 0xe58a63d3 auth hmac-md5 enc 3des-cbc \
       authkey 0xabcdfghijklmnopqrstuvxyz \
       enckey 0xabcdfghijklmnopqrstuvxyz
esp tunnel from y.y.y.y to x.x.x.x spi 0x555f1f13 auth hmac-md5 enc 3des-cbc \
      authkey 0xabcdfghijklmnopqrstuvxyz \
       enckey 0xabcdfghijklmnopqrstuvxyz

This shows that the IPsec tunnel between x.x.x.x and y.y.y.y is up.

Depending of the OpenBSD version the output will be different.

Plugin

I put the plugin in /opt/plugins/custom at my OpenBSD box.

#!/bin/sh
#
# Copyright (C) 2009 Peter Andersson, peter@it-slav.net
#
# This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
# it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
# the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
# (at your option) any later version.
#
# This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
# but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
# MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
# GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#
# Very simple plugin that checks if a ipsec vpn is up between to ip-adresses
# Tested on OpenBSD 4.0
#
# You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
# along with this program.  If not, see .
#
# Example use of this script:
# ./check_ipsecctl 10.1.1.1 10.2.1.1 "VPN HQ"
# OK: VPN HQ is up
#
# ./check_ipsecctl 10.1.1.1 10.2.1.1 "VPN HQ"
# CRITICAL: VPN HQ is down (No IP-SEC VPN from 10.1.1.1 to 10.2.1.1  No IP-SEC VPN from 10.2.1.1 to 10.1.1.1)
#
#
IPSECCTL="/sbin/ipsecctl -s sa"
STATUS=0

LINE1=`$IPSECCTL | grep "from $1 to $2" `
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
        STATUS=2;
        OUTPUT1="No IP-SEC VPN from $1 to $2 "
fi

LINE2=`$IPSECCTL | grep "from $2 to $1" `
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
        STATUS=2;
        OUTPUT2="No IP-SEC VPN from $2 to $1"
fi

if [ $STATUS -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "OK: $3 is up"
        exit $STATUS
else
        echo "CRITICAL: $3 is down ($OUTPUT1 $OUTPUT2)"
        exit $STATUS
fi

Nrpe config

Nagios run check_ipsecctl via NRPE, it mus run as a privileged user and I use sudo, in /etc/nrpe.cfg

command[vpn_johan]=sudo /opt/plugins/custom/check_ipsecctl x.x.x.x y.y.y.y "VPN Johan"

x.x.x.x and y.y.y.y are the IP-addresses where the VPN tunnel terminates

Sudo

Use sudoedit /etc/sudoers to modify the sudo config file:

nagios  ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /opt/plugins/custom/check_ipsecctl

Nagios or op5 Monitor configuration

The VPN connection can be treated as a service running on the OpenBSD box, but in my opinion, the VPN  should be treated as a host using the plugin above to check that the host is alive, and the hosts at the other end of the VPN connection should have the  VPN tunnel as parent. The advantage is that if the VPN tunnel is down the hosts and services behind it is unreachable, which is the correct behavior.

hosts.cfg

# host template 'default-hosttemplate-nrpe'
define host{
    name                           default-hosttemplate-nrpe
    check_command                  check_nrpe
    max_check_attempts             5
    obsess_over_host               0
    check_freshness                0
    active_checks_enabled          1
    passive_checks_enabled         1
    event_handler_enabled          1
    flap_detection_enabled         1
    flap_detection_options         n
    process_perf_data              1
    retain_status_information      1
    retain_nonstatus_information   1
    notification_interval          0
    notification_period            24x7
    notification_options           d,u,r,f
    notifications_enabled          1
    stalking_options               n
    register                       0
    }
# host 'vpn-johan'
define host{
    use                            default-hosttemplate-nrpe
    host_name                      vpn-johan
    alias                          vpn johan
    address                        10.1.1.1
    parents                        internet
    check_command                  check_nrpe!vpn_johan
    contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
    }

10.1.1.1 is the IP-adress to my OpenBSD box. The reason for using a template is that I’m using the webbased config tool that comes with op5 Monitor.

The result

Links

• Nagios
• op5 Monitor a Nagios based full supported monitor solution
• OpenBSD, a FREE, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system.
• IPsec, a suite of protocols for securing Internet Protocol communications by authenticating and encrypting each IP packet of a data stream.

This article describe howto use a USB camera (also known as webcam) to detect motions and send an alarm to Nagios or op5 Monitor. It can be used in datacenters to send an alert if someone or something is moving or at home to detect if someone is in your house. I will place the camera just inside the door so everybody passing my front door will be filmed and an alert will be sent to me.

The software used:

• Motion, to detect movement and create a movie of the relevant time, pictures is also taken.
• Nagios or op5 Monitor to create the alarm.

The hardware used is an old Logitech webcam I found in my fathers drawer Motion supports alot of different devices but must simple is to use a video4linux supported device.

The pre req. for this article is a working Nagios or op5 Monitor system.

Installation

I have an Ubuntu system where I attach the webcamera, dmesg gives me:

[634581.861029] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 3
[634582.032251] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[634582.034125] quickcam: QuickCam USB camera found (driver version QuickCam USB 0.6.6 $Date: 2006/11/04 08:38:14 $)
[634582.034144] quickcam: Kernel:2.6.27-11-generic bus:1 class:FF subclass:FF vendor:046D product:0870
[634582.048202] quickcam: Sensor HDCS-1020 detected
[634582.050173] quickcam: Registered device: /dev/video0

Installing motion is simple, just run:

sudo apt-get install motion

I will use passive checks to let motion send in alerts to Nagios, the best way of doing that is by using NSCA, for theory refer to an earlier article.

sudo apt-get install nsca

Test motion

The first thing to test is that motion works, for me to get it to work I needed no configuration, run:

sudo motion

and dance in front of your camera.

Now motion should inform that it has created pictures and a movie.

Configuration

Configure Nagios or op5 Monitor to accept alerts sent from motion:

# service 'Camera Motion Detection'
define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            Camera Motion Detection
 check_command                  check_dummy!0 "No motion detected"
 max_check_attempts             1
 active_checks_enabled          0
 flap_detection_options         n
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 stalking_options               n
 check_freshness                1
 freshness_threshold            3600
}

If nothing has been sent within an hour (3600 seconds), the state is set to OK by using freshness and check_dummy.

Create /home/motion/scripts/check_camera_motion/send_nsca.cfg

encryption_method=0

Create /home/motion/scripts/check_camera_motion/passive_camera_warning

lala    Camera Motion Detection    1    WARNING: Motion detected

The separator must be TAB

In /etc/motion/motion.conf, find the parameter on_event_start and change it to:

on_event_start  cd /home/motion/scripts/check_camera&&send_nsca -H op5.mynet -c send_nsca.cfg < passive_camera_warning

And an alert will be sent to Nagios everytime motion detects a motion.

Start motion with:

sudo motion

And do the dancing again, now you should have an Nagios alarm with status WARNING.

Hint

A good idea could be to change the parameters target_dir and snapshot_filename to a directory where you can point apache websever, so you can use a webbrowser to browse your images and movies.

Links

• Motion, the software used to detect motions
• Nagios
• op5 Monitor, a supported version of Nagios

Nagios is the number one open source software and one of the most widely recognized and used open source monitoring tools available today. Host for Nordic Meet on Nagios 2009 is op5, a company that supplies software based on open source for control of IT systems and networks, and utilizes Nagios as a key project in their product op5 Monitor. This is the second time for the conference in Stockholm.

Nagios is one of the most widely recognized and used open source monitoring tools available today. Nagios started ten years ago of Ethan Galstad, and is currently maintained by him and supported by a big community. http://www.nagios.org/community/

The open source project has become huge and is today used of 250 000 companies and authorities around the world!
Several speakers working on projects affiliated to Nagios will also attend the Nordic Meet on Nagios. This is the second Nagios conference in Stockholm and op5 is hoping for an even greater success this year.

op5 utilizes Nagios as a key project in op5 Monitor. op5 focuses on adding enterprise necessary features such as full system support, detailed reports and packaging the whole system from hardware level to end user interface as an easy to install and easy to maintain product. op5 Monitor has become a popular alternative to large, complex and expensive network monitoring solutions such as HP Open View.

The 2008 Nordic Nagios Meet was a great success and in these times of uncertainty, organizing a conference addressing & discussing monitoring and control of IT with key industry speakers like Ethan from Nagios Enterprises and Tobias from Oetiker & Partners (RRD Tool) is just a privilege, says Jan Josephson, CEO at op5. This is an opportunity to meet key open source profiles and discuss the future of their Nagios related OSS Projects, listen to the latest news, market trends and case studies focusing on business value.

The date for Scandinavia’s largest Nagios event 2009 is set to June 3-4.
More information on www.nmn2009.com

Pre requirements

The pre requriements for this article is a working Nagios or op5 Installation and a working MySql database.

Plugin

The plugin used in this article is: http://www.consol.de/opensource/nagios/check-mysql-health

Unfortunatly the webpage is in German only.

Enable MySql to retrive information

mysql> grant usage on *.* to 'nagios'@'op5' identified by 'XXXX-';

op5 is the nagios hostname.

Download the plugin, install and test

Download the plugin from http://www.consol.de/fileadmin/opensource/Nagios/check_mysql_health-2.0.4.tar.gz

I put it into /opt/plugins/custom/check_mysql_health at the Nagios server.

Test the command by running at the Nagios server:

[root@op5 custom]# ./check_mysql_health -H mysqlhost --user nagios --password XXXX  --mode threads-connected
 OK - 5 client connection threads | threads_connected=5;10;20

It works!!

To get a list of what the check_mysql_health plugin can monitor run:

[root@op5 custom]# ./check_mysql_health --help

Configure Nagios or op5 Monitor

I find the following parameters interesting to monitor:

• connection-time
• keycache-hitrate
• qcache-hitrate
• tablecache-hitrate
• threadcache-hitrate
• tmp-disk-tables

checkcommands.cfg

# command 'check_mysql_health'
 define command{
 command_name                   check_mysql_health
 command_line                   $USER1$/custom/check_mysql_health -H $HOSTADDRESS$ --user $ARG1$ -password $ARG2$ --mode $ARG3$
 }

# command 'check_mysql_health_tresholds'
 define command{
 command_name                   check_mysql_health_tresholds
 command_line                   $USER1$/custom/check_mysql_health -H $HOSTADDRESS$ --user $ARG1$ -password $ARG2$ --mode $ARG3$ --warning $ARG4$ --critical $ARG5$
 }

I created a servicegroup named mysql

servicegroups.cfg

# servicegroup 'mysql'
 define servicegroup{
 servicegroup_name              mysql
 alias                          MySQL
 }

I use the default thresholds in my servicedefinitions, but use check_mysql_health_thresholds instead if thresholds are required.
services.cfg

# service 'MySQL connection-time'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL connection-time
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!nagios!XXXX!connection-time
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

# service 'MySQL keycache-hitrate'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL keycache-hitrate
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!XXXX!keycache-hitrate
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

# service 'MySQL qcache-hitrate'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL qcache-hitrate
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!nagios!XXXX!qcache-hitrate
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

# service 'MySQL tablecache-hitrate'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL tablecache-hitrate
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!nagios!XXXX!tablecache-hitrate
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

# service 'MySQL threadcache-hitrate'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL threadcache-hitrate
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!nagios!XXXX!threadcache-hitrate
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

# service 'MySQL tmp-disk-tables'
 define service{
 use                            default-service
 host_name                      lala
 service_description            MySQL tmp-disk-tables
 check_command                  check_mysql_health!nagios!XXXX!tmp-disk-tables
 servicegroups                  mysql
 contact_groups                 it-slav_msn,it-slav_mail,call_it-slav
 }

The result

Conclusions and wrap-up

The default values are in many cases not sufficent, I have no database that do not get WARNING or CRITICAL when the default thresholds are used. If that is because the thresholds are not realistic or if it my applications that are badly implemented I do not know. So the databases needs tuning and the thresholds must be changed to get rid of constant errormessages.

Links

• op5 Monitor
• Nagios
• Tuning MySQL
• The plugin used in this article check_mysql_health

—cut’n paste—

Welcome to Nordic Meet on Nagios 2009 (NMN2009) June 3-4th, the largest Nagios Meet in Scandinavia. The 2008 Meet was a great success! The event was filled to the last seat and a great atmosphere in great summer weather in Stockholm! You can watch a video from the 2008 event.

Take the opportunity to meet key open source profiles and discuss the future of their Nagios Related OSS Projects, listen to the latest news, market trends and case studies focusing on business value. There will be open discussions on development and technology challenges as well as hands on workshops. This year we develop the meet further with a longer program with more speakers from more projects, workshops and a whole lot of fun! We hope to meet you on Nordic Meet on Nagios 2009

—end cut’n paste—

I will be there…