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

• op5 Monitor Beta, virtual image in ovf format
• Try op5 Monitor Beta

The op5 Monitor Beta use Ninja as GUI and Merlin as a databasebackend.

• Hard to manage without iTunes
• iTunes is crap
• Cannot play ogg and flac
• I just want to attach it and it should popup like a USB disk, drop the files into it, detach and play the songs.

I got a hint from a friend that I should try RockBox, so I download it and used the very simple installer on linux and it works perfectly well. All the drawbacks mentioned above are solved and  as a bonus the gui is much better.

Now I can:

• Play ogg
• Play flac
• Customize the GUI
• Change myriads of settings
• Throw away mysterious sync software like iTunes and others.
• Attach it as a USB disk, drop my media files into it, detach and play them

If you are lucky and owns a Rockbox supported media player, update it. You will not regret it.

I have read the book Asterisk now by Nir Simionovich, published in March 2008. The book was a big disappointment, the reason is that the book do not cover the software used in AsteriskNOW today. The book cover the Asterisk GUI but AsteriskNOW is using FreePBX instead which is totally different. One main reason to use AsteriskNow is to avoid the sometimes cumbersome task to install Linux or a similair operating system, download, compile and configure Asterisk using cryptic text files. So an accurate description of the GUI used is essential for a book like this and unfortunatly the book is to old. I do not intend to install an old version of AsteriskNOW just for a bookreview so I cannot tell how accurate the book is. So my recommendation is to wait for an updated version of AsteriskNow book.

Links

• A sample chapter Chapter-7-For-Annoyance-Press-1-Voice-Menus-and-IVR
• Link to the book AsteriskNow

–cut–

• Implementation of the missing Nagios cgi’s. (showlog, history,trends, notifications etc)
• Include Avail/SLA reports in Ninja  (Avail reports are an improved version of the Nagios avail reports and SLA is a new report type)
• Lots of bugfixes

–cut–

Links

• Ninja, Nagios Is Now Just Awesome
• Merlin, Module for Endless Redundacy and Loadbalancing In Nagios
• op5, a company with enterprise network- and systems management based on OpenSource.

Background

I was with my geekfriends at a ski resort and I managed to get an Internet connection using a cellphone. Of course I wanted to share it with my friends. As geeks we brought a switch and a couple of ethernetcables.

Solution

Using this script on a Ubuntu 9.10 I managed to share my connection:

sudo ifconfig eth0 10.8.16.1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1
sudo sysctl -w net.ipv4.conf.all.forwarding=1
sudo iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
sudo iptables --table nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE

Conmnect everymachine with the switch and the clients just needed to use a 10.0.0.0/8 network adress and add 10.8.16.1 as default gateway and it works!

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

After some Google search and reading of man pages I finally get it working.

My setup is a Nokia E52 and a IBM T60 laptop running Ubuntu 9.10. I have tested it with a Ericsson P1i and a Dell D630 aswell and I think the guidlines below will work with many other setups. One exception is probably iPhone

From a bash shell run:

peter@svarten:~$ sdptool search DUN
Inquiring ...
Searching for DUN on A8:7E:33:20:40:0F ...
Service Name: Dial-Up Networking
Service RecHandle: 0x10030
Service Class ID List:
  "Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
Protocol Descriptor List:
  "L2CAP" (0x0100)
  "RFCOMM" (0x0003)
    Channel: 5
Language Base Attr List:
  code_ISO639: 0x454e
  encoding:    0x6a
  base_offset: 0x100
Profile Descriptor List:
  "Dialup Networking" (0x1103)
    Version: 0x0100

peter@svarten:~$ sudo rfcomm connect 1 A8:7E:33:20:40:0F 5
[sudo] password for peter:
Connected /dev/rfcomm1 to A8:7E:33:20:40:0F on channel 5
Press CTRL-C for hangup

Now my phone asks if I accept the connection and I choose "yes".

And now the networkmanager has a new "Mobile Broadband connection". Just choose your operator and it will work.

Pre req

• a GPS reciever
• gpsd
• gpsd-client

In my setup I have the GPS reciever attached to my laptop which I travel around with. On my webserver I have gpsd-client and a script that generates the webpage. I use a VPN connection to allow my webserver to communicate with the laptop gpsdaemon. On the roads I use 3G attached cellphone and when I have an internet connection via cable or wifi I use that.

The script

#!/bin/sh
GPSPIPE=/usr/bin/gpspipe
OUTFILE=/home/peter/public_html/my_position.html
#GPSDIP=10.8.0.10
GPSDIP=192.168.0.153
while true
do
        GPSDATA=`$GPSPIPE -w -n 10 $GPSDIP |grep O=`
        if [ "$?" ]
        then
                LON=`echo $GPSDATA| awk '{ print $5 }'`
                LAT=`echo $GPSDATA| awk '{ print $4 }'`
        	echo "LON=$LON LAT=$LAT"
		cat > $OUTFILE <<EOF
<html>
<head>
        <title>Last know It-slav location</title>
        <!-- bring in the OpenLayers javascript library
                 (here we bring it from the remote site, but you could
                 easily serve up this javascript yourself) -->
        <script src="http://www.openlayers.org/api/OpenLayers.js"></script>
        <!-- bring in the OpenStreetMap OpenLayers layers.
                 Using this hosted file will make sure we are kept up
                 to date with any necessary changes -->
        <script src="http://www.openstreetmap.org/openlayers/OpenStreetMap.js"></script>

        <script type="text/javascript">
                // Start position for the map (hardcoded here for simplicity,
                // but maybe you want to get from URL params)
EOF
echo "var lat=$LAT" >>$OUTFILE
echo "var lon=$LON" >>$OUTFILE
cat >> $OUTFILE <<EOF
                var zoom=13

                var map; //complex object of type OpenLayers.Map

                function init() {
                        map = new OpenLayers.Map ("map", {
                                controls:[
                                        new OpenLayers.Control.Navigation(),
                                        new OpenLayers.Control.PanZoomBar(),
                                        new OpenLayers.Control.LayerSwitcher(),
                                        new OpenLayers.Control.Attribution()],
                                maxExtent: new OpenLayers.Bounds(-20037508.34,-20037508.34,20037508.34,20037508.34),
                                maxResolution: 156543.0399,
                                numZoomLevels: 19,
                                units: 'm',
                                projection: new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:900913"),
                                displayProjection: new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326")
                        } );

                        // Define the map layer
                        // Note that we use a predefined layer that will be
                        // kept up to date with URL changes
                        // Here we define just one layer, but providing a choice
                        // of several layers is also quite simple
                        // Other defined layers are OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik, OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Maplint and OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.CycleMap
                        layerMapnik = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Mapnik("Mapnik");
                        map.addLayer(layerMapnik);
                        layerTilesAtHome = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.Osmarender("Osmarender");
                        map.addLayer(layerTilesAtHome);
                        layerCycleMap = new OpenLayers.Layer.OSM.CycleMap("CycleMap");
                        map.addLayer(layerCycleMap);
                        layerMarkers = new OpenLayers.Layer.Markers("Markers");
                        map.addLayer(layerMarkers);

                        // Add the Layer with GPX Track
                        //var lgpx = new OpenLayers.Layer.GML("MB Bruderholz", "mb_bruderholz.GPX", {
                        //    format: OpenLayers.Format.GPX,
                        //    style: {strokeColor: "green", strokeWidth: 5, strokeOpacity: 0.5},
                        //    projection: new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326")
                        //});
                        //map.addLayer(lgpx);
                        var lonLat = new OpenLayers.LonLat(lon, lat).transform(new OpenLayers.Projection("EPSG:4326"), map.getProjectionObject());
                        map.setCenter (lonLat, zoom);

                        var size = new OpenLayers.Size(21,25);
                        var offset = new OpenLayers.Pixel(-(size.w/2), -size.h);
                        var icon = new OpenLayers.Icon('http://www.openstreetmap.org/openlayers/img/marker.png',size,offset);
                        layerMarkers.addMarker(new OpenLayers.Marker(lonLat,icon));
                }
        </script>

</head>
<!-- body.onload is called once the page is loaded (call the 'init' function) -->
<body onload="init();">
        <!-- define a DIV into which the map will appear. Make it take up the whole window -->
        <div style="width:90%; height:90%" id="map"></div>
</body>
</html>
EOF
	else
		echo "No GPS data"
	fi
	sleep 10
done

Gpsdaemon

To enable the gpsdameon to allow another host to attach to it start it with -g i.e.

sudo gpsd -N -n -D 3 -G /dev/rfcomm1

The result

The result can be found here or a screenshot below:

Links

• gpsd
• how to attach the bluetooth GPS reciever
• OpenStreetMaps

In situations like this I recommend a USB SATA/PATA interface i.e. Plexgear at Kjell&Company, the adapter looks like it is OEM:ed so there probably several with different brands.

Features:

• USB-SATA
• USB-PATA 2.5"
• USB-PATA 3.5"
• Power Supply for normal devices and SATA devices

The only thing I miss is that it does not contain a SCSI interface aswell

I have used it to backup files on a LVM disk, transfer files from old disk to a new when upgrading, reinitialize a disk that refused to install Windows 7, attach a DVD-Rom to a blade server and so on.

In my opinion every geek and sysadmin should have one.

Now I have upgraded my PSP to firmware 5.50 GEN-D and finally I can drop movies into the /VIDEO folder and look at them in full resolution. So finally I can look at mythtv recordings on my way to the work or my kids can look at movies in the back of the car when we are travelling. Now it time to buy a second PSP.

Converting movies into a PSP accepted format is rather painful. I have not find any good solution running on linux. I have fiddled several hours with handbrake, avidemux, commandline driven ffmepg and PSPVC. The only program that makes the converting somewhat painless, just time consuming, is PSPVC on windows. The main problem on linux seems to be that ffmpeg is broken and need to be recompiled.

My recommendation to Sony is to open up their excellent solutions. Right of my mind I know four failures Sony have made because of their vendor look in strategy:

• Betamax video format, technically much better then VHS but closed. Betamax died and crappy VHS conquered the world.
• MiniDisc, an excellent technology which Sony refused to open up until it was to late. If they would have opened it would replaced floppys and killed Compact Cassets much earlier. Probably portable MP3 players would be postponed a year or two.
• PSP, if Sony would have opened it with SDKs and open APIs Apples POD products would not exist or be a margin product.
• PS3, with a open hardware platform so a real Linux solution could run, not the hybrid they have now, Sony would own the HTPC market. With the power of the PS3 and possibility to install for example mythtv, XBMC and other media solutions they would sell alot more PS3 and when the PS3 is there, several games would be sold aswell. 

So Sony if you want to get richer, open up!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I registered on their homepage and after a couple of days I got a snail mail with my credentials.

I configured my FreePBX and calling in worked directly, but not outgoing. After 2 hours of troubleshooting I started to google "phonzo asterisk" and found several people that has the same experience. The reason is that Phonzo does not accepted "Asterisk PBX" as useragent and that is default in Asterisk.

After changing sip.conf

[general]

...

useragent=it-slav PBX

....

It worked!

I do not like unlogical stupidity so I sent an email to the support and the following bizare mail conversation occoured:

I will update this post when new info arrives.

• Without any information my Asterisk could not register anymore. After discussion with Bredband2 support they activated my account again after a week. According to Bredband2 this was not a disturbance in their service, it was regular maintenance. It is a policy to only compensate service problems.

• Bredband2 has several times shutdown my ability to call out. Every time they claim that I have no money left. After asking them to recheck they find my money and open my possibilty to call again.
• Before Bredban2 and Digisip join, I got an email with my account status every month. Today I have to send an email to the support to ask and the only info I get is how much money I have not used. No specification at all.

The webpage http://www.digisip.se, redirect to this page in swedish. It claims that service is much better when Bredband2 and Digisip has joined and refer to the support if you want to know account balance and so on, during the period until everything is working again. This page has been there for several months.

I have asked several times to get my money back and end my account. But Bredband2 refuse and claims that the lack of availability is regular maintenance.

I have finished reading the great book "FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions", by Alex Robar and it is 277 pages.

The intended target audience for this book are system administrators who want to get started with Asterisk and FreePBX.  It is perfect for administrators who want to reduce costs by replacing a proprietary PBX with a PBX that runs on open source packages. The pre required knowledge is basic knowledge of Linux and telephony, though neither is strictly required.

I find the targeted audience and the pre required knowledge correct, however I think the Linux knowledge is an absolute demand or at least have someone to ask. A basic knowledge of Telephony is also more or less required.

The book cover installation on CentOS and Ubuntu Server, configuration, adding handset, trunk setup, call routing, voicemail, digital receptionist, music-on-hold, call recording, maintenance, backups and much more.

I find the book very valuable and I really like the concept of FreePBX. When starting with Asterisk the myriads of parameters are overwhelming. FreePBX makes the approach to Asterisk easier and makes the startup much faster then go to the Asterisk config via textfiles. FreePBX comes with many modules that should be enough for most demands and if needed it is still possible to use configuration using config files.

The book describes the most important modules in FreePBX in a structured and pedagogic way with many screenshoots and figures. I really likes the examples in the end of the book with trunk configuration to some big SIP providers. Even if none of them is valid in Sweden it gives you an idea what parameters to start with when configure trunks.

When it comes to trouble shooting I think the book should have contained a chapter about that. In many cases the way of trouble shoot is to use the Asterisk CLI, read logs and in some cases use a network analyser like WireShark. I think the book should have contained an introduction to trouble shooting and the different tools available.

Some of the script examples contain some typos but with basic scripting knowledge it is easy to fix.

I reccomend this book for anyone interested in FreePBX, FreePBX admins and Asterisk newbies. This book makes the start with FreePBX much faster compared to  trying to collect the information from the web and other sources. The FreePBX website is a great as a reference, however this book makes it easy and fast to get started with FreePBX and Asterisk.

Links:

• More info about  the book "FreePBX 2.5 Powerful Telephony Solutions"
• Example chapter 8 Recording calls
• FreePBX homepage
• Asterisk homepage

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

My old cell phone had stopped working so I needed a new.

The demands I have on the new phone is nothing strange.

Must:

• Be able to use as a phone
• Be able to use as a modem in Linux
• Be able to sync with Google Calendar
• Fit into the phone policy my employer have so I do not need to pay anything by myself
• A battery that does not require charging everyday

Nice to have:

• GPS
• Google maps
• 3,5mm headset connection
• mp3, ogg vorbis
• SIP so I can use it as a VOIP phone

After discussions with collegues, friends, surfing the web I found a good candidate that would fullfill the "must have"requirements and some of the "nice to have". Now I have used the phone for approximatly 3 weeks and this is the conclusions.

Must:

I am very disappointed that it seams very hard to get the Nokia e52 to do calender sync with Google calendar. It seems like it needs to use Microsoft Exchange in between. Every guide I found use the mysterious "Mail for Exchange" to do that, why?

Nice:

Conclusion

As always when I use a device from the telecom industry I fascinates by the old way of trying to vendor lock-in and the closed way of adding value to the customers. By telling that the phone has support for Google Calendar and SIP support and making it so complex to use that it is useless does not make me as a customer happy. The service providers do not recommend a SIP enabled phone because they want to cell phonecalls instead of datatraffic and Nokia do not dare to take this fight and put the customer and openness  in the first place, instead they try to do business the old way. This way of thinking is the reason why open solutions like Asterisk and other VOIP based solutions are getting more and more market share. I can build a powerful PBX at home that would cost a fortune with a traditional solution.

I hope I will get my hands on a Android and I think that is the future, an open and free platform.

However the Nokia e52 does the job as a phone well with some nice features.

I have read the excellent book Asterisk 1.6, Build feature-rich telephony systems with Asterisk by David Merel, Barrie Dempster and David Gomillion.

The book is inteended to anyone interested in bulding a telephony system using Asterisk and are 224 pages. The book claims that no preknowledge about opensource, Linux and Asterisk is required. I think it is a little bit hard to start without any of these knowledge. I would recommend to have basic Linux/Unix knowledge to be able to go through the installation part.

It starts from the begining with introduction to Asterisk, brief telephony system introduction, installing Asterisk,configure Asterisk, creating dialplans. It continues with call logging, different pre-made Asterisk alternatives like trixbox/FreePBX, asterCRM and Case studies and ends with some hints that makes the life of an Asterisk admin easier.

I relly liked the book. When starting with no Asterisk knowledge the number of config files and parameter is overvelming and this book help the reader to penetrate that. The book walk through basic configuration and help to get your a Asterisk installation up and running. I like that it gives an overview of different things to consider when to start an Asterisk implementation and builds up a basic knowledge about the subject.

I appreciate the case studies where three different scenarios are described: Small office/home office, Small business and a hosted PBX.

The drawback of the book is that it just gives an introduction to the different topics. I would like to have a little bit deeper knowledge in some of the topics, for an example dialplans.

I would recommend the book to newbies to Asterisk, the book will help them to get started and boost their knowledge. It is possible to gain all the knowledge in the book by visiting different Asterisk forums, read documentation and so on but that will take much effort compared to read the book.

• To buy the book: Asterisk 1.6, Build feature-rich telephony systems with Asterisk

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
    }

Many people have received their 4.6 CDs in the mail by now, and we
really don't want them to be without the full package repository.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- OpenBSD 4.6 RELEASED -------------------------------------------------

Oct 18, 2009.

We are pleased to announce the official release of OpenBSD 4.6.
This is our 26th release on CD-ROM (and 27th via FTP).  We remain
proud of OpenBSD's record of more than ten years with only two remote
holes in the default install.

As in our previous releases, 4.6 provides significant improvements,
including new features, in nearly all areas of the system:

- New/extended platforms:
    o mvme88k
      o MVME141 and MVME165 boards are now supported.
    o sgi
      o SGI Octane, SGI Origin 200 and SGI Fuel systems are now supported.
      o Several bugs in interrupt handling have been fixed, resulting
        in significantly improved system response.
    o sparc
      o The bootblock load address has been moved so that larger kernels
        can be loaded.
    o sparc64
      o Acceleration support has been added for many of the PCI frame buffer
        drivers, such as the Sun PGX, PGX64 and XVR-100, and Tech Source
        Raptor GFX graphics cards.

- Improved hardware support, including:
    o Several new/improved drivers for sensors, including:
      o The ips(4) driver now has sensor support, complementing the bio support.
      o The acpithinkpad(4) driver now has temperature and fan sensor support.
      o New endrun(4) driver for the EndRun Technologies timedelta sensor.
      o The fins(4) driver now has support for F71806, F71862 and F71882 ICs.
      o The acpitz(4) driver now shows correct decimals for temperature.
    o Added radeonfb(4) to sparc64, an accelerated framebuffer for
      Sun XVR-100 boards.
    o Added support for RTL8103E and RTL8168DP devices in the re(4) driver.
    o Added support for BCM5709/BCM5716 devices in the bnx(4) driver.
    o Added support for ICH10 variants of em(4).
    o Added support for VIA VX855 chipset in the viapm(4) and pciide(4) drivers.
    o Added support for Intel SCH IDE to pciide(4).
    o Added support for the Broadcom HT-1100 chipset in the piixpm(4) driver.
    o Added support for 82574L based devices in the em(4) driver.
    o Added support for VIA CX800 south bridge to the viapm(4) driver.
    o A number of network drivers including bge(4), bnx(4), hme(4), iwn(4),
      ix(4), msk(4), sis(4), sk(4), vr(4) and wpi(4) now make use of the
      MCLGETI(9) allocator in order to reduce memory usage and increase
      performance when under load or attack.
    o Added support in em(4) for the newer 82575 chips.
    o zyd(4) now supports devices with Airoha AL2230S radios.
    o zyd(4) now works on big-endian machines
    o urtw(4) now supports RTL8187B based devices.
    o New otus(4) driver for Atheros AR9001U USB 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N
      wireless devices.
    o New berkwdt(4) driver for Berkshire Products PCI watchdog timers.
    o New udl(4) driver for USB video devices.
    o Support for a variety of newer models in bge(4).
    o Initial version of vsw(4), a driver for the virtual network switch
      found on sun4v sparc64 systems.
    o Implemented machfb(4), an accelerated driver for the sparc64 PGX/PGX64
      framebuffers.
    o New vcc(4) and vcctty(4) drivers for the "Virtual Console Concentrator"
      found on the control domain of sun4v systems.
    o Implemented 64-bit FIFO modes for ciss(4) devices.
    o Enabled hardware VLAN tagging and stripping on ix(4).
    o Added basic support for Envy24HT chips to the envy(4) driver.
    o Many improvements and updates to the isp(4) driver.
    o Added support for 88E8057-based Yukon 2 Ultra 2-devices in msk(4).
    o The ips(4) driver now works reliably.
    o Added raptor(4), an accelerated framebuffer driver for the Tech Source
      Raptor GFX cards on the sparc64 platform.
    o Enabled schsio(4) on i386 and amd64 and added watchdog timer support.
    o New acpivideo(4) driver for ACPI display switching and brightness control.
    o Added support for the IBM ServeRAID-8k in the aac(4) driver.
    o Added support for the BCM5825 and 5860/61/62 Broadcom CryptoNetX
      IPSec/SSL Security processor in the ubsec(4) driver.
    o Added support for AES-CBC with BCM5823-based ubsec(4) devices.
    o Firmware for bnx(4) has been updated.
    o Added support to fxp(4) for the 82552 MAC found on some ICH7 chipsets.
    o Added support to umsm(4) for Truinstall enabled modems like the
      Sierra 881U.
    o Added support to pciide(4) for ICH10 SATA devices not operating in
      AHCI mode.
    o dc(4) now reads the MAC address from the eeprom rather than CIS.
    o em(4) now correctly handles MAC addresses for dual-port 8257[56] cards.
    o IPv6 receive TCP/UDP checksum offloading has been enabled for jme(4).
    o IPv6 receive TCP/UDP checksum offloading has been enabled in bge(4) for
      the 5755 and later chips.
    o iwi(4) now associates with APs that refuse non-short slot-time capable
      STAs.
    o IP, TCP and UDP checksum offloading has been enabled in vr(4) for
      VT6105M-based devices.
    o VGA BIOS repost support has been added for amd64 and i386 platforms.

- New tools:
    o Added smtpd(8), a new privilege-separated SMTP daemon.
    o Imported the tmux(1) terminal multiplexer, replacing window(1).

- New functionality:
    o httpd(8) can now serve files larger than 2GB in size.
    o Mice with many buttons are now supported by wsmoused(8).
    o New "nfsserver" and "nfsclient" views have been added to systat(1).
    o Automatic partition allocation has been added to disklabel(8), with a
      variety of smart heuristics.
    o An undo command has been added to disklabel(8), which reverts the
      label back to its previous state.
    o When running in auto-mode, sysmerge(8) will now install binary files
      from X sets automatically.
    o sysmerge(8) now creates a report summary file in the work directory.
    o httpd(8) now drops privileges to www/www rather than nobody/nogroup
      if the User/Group entries are not present within the configuration file.
    o ELF based platforms now generate ELF core dumps and gdb(1) is now able
      to read ELF core dumps.
    o Additional diff options have been added to opencvs(1).
    o When sendbug(1) is run as root, the pcidump(8) and acpidump(8) output
      is included.
    o Support for audible ping(8) and ping6(8) has been added.
    o ftpd(8) now logs both the remote IP and remote hostname when receiving
      a new connection.
    o relayd(8) now allows both UDP and TCP redirections.
    o SSL sessions are now maintained by relayd(8) for each checked host,
      resulting in subsequent checks being lighter and faster on the server.
    o Added support to relayd(8) for client-side TCP connections from relays.
    o Added support to relayd(8) for specifying a CA file to verify SSL server
      certificates when connecting as a client from relays.

- pf(4) improvements:
    o Enabled pf(4) by default in the rc.conf(8).
    o Removed pf(4) scrub rules, and only do one kind of packet reassembly.
      Rulesets with scrub rules need to be modified because of this.
    o Regular rules can now have per-rule scrub options.
    o Added new "match" keyword which only applies rule options but does
      not change the current pass/block state.
    o Make all pf(4) operations transactional to improve atomicity of reloads.
    o Stricter pf(4) checking for ICMP and ICMPv6 packets.
    o Various improvements to pfsync(4) to lower sync traffic bandwidth and
      optionally allow active-active firewall setups.
    o Fix pf(4) scrub max-mss for IPv6 traffic.

- softraid(4) improvements:
    o Rebuild support has been added and RAID 1 volumes can now be rebuilt.
    o Boot time assembly has been significantly improved, with volume and
      chunk ordering now being respected. Duplicated chunks and version
      mismatches are also handled gracefully.
    o Volumes with missing members are now brought online.

- OpenBGPD, OpenOSPFD and other routing daemon improvements:
    o In bgpd(8), rework most of the RDE to allow multiple RIBs.
      It is possible to filter per-RIB and attach neighbors to a specific RIB.
    o Added an option to bgpd(8) to change the "connect-retry" timer.
    o Allow bgpd.conf(5) and bgpctl(8) to contain 32-bit ASN numbers written in
      ASPLAIN format.
    o Fix bgpd(8) to correctly encode MP unreachable NLRI so IPv6 prefixes get
      removed correctly.
    o Changed the behaviour of "redistribute default" for ospfd(8) and ripd(8).
      A default route has to be present in the FIB to be correctly advertised.
    o Make ospfd(8) and ripd(8) track reject and blackhole routes and allow
      them to be redistributed even if pointing to 127.0.0.1.
    o Allow an alternate control socket to be specified for ospfd(8).
    o ospfd(8) can now be bound to an alternate routing domain.
    o Fix ospfd(8) route metric for "redistribute default".
    o Initial version of ldpctl(8) and ldpd(8), a label distribution protocol
      daemon for mpls.
    o Make dvmrpd(8) RDE aware of multicast group members per interface.
    o Added support for pruning in dvmrpd(8).

- Generic Network-Stack improvements:
    o Support for virtual routing and firewalling with the addition of routing
      domains.
    o Added support for ifconfig(8) to bind an interface to a routing domain.
    o Added support to ping(8), traceroute(8), arp(8), nc(1) and telnet(1) to
      specify which routing domain to use.
    o Allow ifconfig(8) to turn off IPv6 completely for an interface and
      make rtsold(8) turn on inet6 on the interface.
    o Routes track the interface link state.
    o route(8) flush accepts "-iface" or "-priority" to only flush routes
      matching these conditions.
    o Multiple dhclients can now coexist without causing mayhem.
    o Make wireless interfaces have an interface priority of 4 by default.
      Makes them less preferred then wired interfaces.
    o Do not accept IPv4 ICMP redirects by default.
    o Added the MAC address to the log entries in dhclient(8).
    o Make systat(1) show interface description names in the interface view,
      and add new NFS server and client views.
    o Make tun(4) emulate link state depending on the open and close of the
      device fd.
    o Use pf state-table information to speed up decision on whether a packet
      is to be delivered locally or forwarded.
    o More routing socket checks added to make userland applications more
      resilient to kernel changes.

- Install/Upgrade process changes:
    o The installer has almost been rewritten, primarily with a focus on
      simplifying the installation process.
    o Automatic disk layout can now be used during installation, allowing for
      simple single-disk installs.
    o VLAN support is now available in some installation media.
    o A standard user account can now be created during the install process.

- OpenSSH 5.3:
    o Do not limit home directory paths to 256 characters.
    o Several minor documentation and correctness fixes.

- Over 5,800 ports, minor robustness improvements in package tools.
    o Many pre-built packages for each architecture:
      i386:   5606    sparc64:  5413    alpha: 5346    sh:     1261
      amd64:  5544    powerpc:  5427    sparc: 3711    mips64: 3443
      arm:    5291    hppa:     4790    vax:   1785

- As usual, steady improvements in manual pages and other documentation.

- The system includes the following major components from outside
  suppliers:
      o Xenocara (based on X.Org 7.4 + patches, freetype 2.3.9,
        fontconfig 2.6.0, Mesa 7.4.2, xterm 243 and more)
      o Gcc 2.95.3 (+ patches) and 3.3.5 (+ patches)
      o Perl 5.10.0 (+ patches)
      o Our improved and secured version of Apache 1.3, with SSL/TLS
        and DSO support
      o OpenSSL 0.9.8k (+ patches)
      o Groff 1.15
      o Sendmail 8.14.3, with libmilter
      o Bind 9.4.2-P2 (+ patches)
      o Lynx 2.8.6rel.5 with HTTPS and IPv6 support (+ patches)
      o Sudo 1.7.2
      o Ncurses 5.2
      o Latest KAME IPv6
      o Heimdal 0.7.2 (+ patches)
      o Arla 0.35.7
      o Binutils 2.15 (+ patches)
      o Gdb 6.3 (+ patches)

If you'd like to see a list of what has changed between OpenBSD 4.5
and 4.6, look at

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/plus46.html

Even though the list is a summary of the most important changes
made to OpenBSD, it still is a very very long list.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- SECURITY AND ERRATA --------------------------------------------------

we provide patches for known security threats and other important
issues discovered after each CD release.  As usual, between the
creation of the OpenBSD 4.6 FTP/CD-ROM binaries and the actual 4.6
release date, our team found and fixed some new reliability problems
(note: most are minor and in subsystems that are not enabled by
default).  Our continued research into security means we will find
new security problems -- and we always provide patches as soon as
possible.  Therefore, we advise regular visits to

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/security.html
and
	http://www.OpenBSD.org/errata.html

Security patch announcements are sent to the security-announce@OpenBSD.org
mailing list.  For information on OpenBSD mailing lists, please see:

	http://www.OpenBSD.org/mail.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- CD-ROM SALES ---------------------------------------------------------

OpenBSD 4.6 is also available on CD-ROM.  The 3-CD set costs $50 CDN and
is available via mail order and from a number of contacts around the
world.  The set includes a colourful booklet which carefully explains the
installation of OpenBSD.  A new set of cute little stickers is also
included (sorry, but our FTP mirror sites do not support STP, the Sticker
Transfer Protocol).  As an added bonus, the second CD contains an audio
track, a song entitled "Planet of the Users".  MP3 and OGG versions of
the audio track can be found on the first CD.

Lyrics (and an explanation) for the songs may be found at:

    http://www.OpenBSD.org/lyrics.html#46

Profits from CD sales are the primary income source for the OpenBSD
project -- in essence selling these CD-ROM units ensures that OpenBSD
will continue to make another release six months from now.

The OpenBSD 4.6 CD-ROMs are bootable on the following four platforms:

  o i386
  o amd64
  o macppc
  o sparc64

(Other platforms must boot from floppy, network, or other method).

For more information on ordering CD-ROMs, see:

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/orders.html

The above web page lists a number of places where OpenBSD CD-ROMs
can be purchased from.  For our default mail order, go directly to:

        https://https.OpenBSD.org/cgi-bin/order

All of our developers strongly urge you to buy a CD-ROM and support
our future efforts.  Additionally, donations to the project are
highly appreciated, as described in more detail at:

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/goals.html#funding

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- OPENBSD FOUNDATION ---------------------------------------------------

For those unable to make their contributions as straightforward gifts,
the OpenBSD Foundation (http://www.openbsdfoundation.org) is a Canadian
not-for-profit corporation that can accept larger contributions and
issue receipts.  In some situations, their receipt may qualify as a
business expense writeoff, so this is certainly a consideration for
some organizations or businesses.  There may also be exposure benefits
since the Foundation may be interested in participating in press releases.
In turn, the Foundation then uses these contributions to assist OpenBSD's
infrastructure needs.  Contact the foundation directors at
directors@openbsdfoundation.org for more information.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- T-SHIRT SALES --------------------------------------------------------

The OpenBSD distribution companies also sell tshirts and polo shirts.
And our users like them too.  We have a variety of shirts available,
with the new and old designs, from our web ordering system at, as
described above.

The OpenBSD 4.6 t-shirts are available now.  We also sell our older
shirts, as well as a selection of OpenSSH t-shirts.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- FTP INSTALLS ---------------------------------------------------------

If you choose not to buy an OpenBSD CD-ROM, OpenBSD can be easily
installed via FTP.  Typically you need a single small piece of boot
media (e.g., a boot floppy) and then the rest of the files can be
installed from a number of locations, including directly off the
Internet.  Follow this simple set of instructions to ensure that
you find all of the documentation you will need while performing
an install via FTP.  With the CD-ROMs, the necessary documentation
is easier to find.

1) Read either of the following two files for a list of ftp
   mirrors which provide OpenBSD, then choose one near you:

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/ftp.html
        ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/ftplist

   As of Oct 1, 2009, the following ftp mirror sites have the 4.6 release:

	ftp://ftp.stacken.kth.se/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/	Sweden
	ftp://ftp2.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/	NYC, USA
	ftp://ftp3.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/	CO, USA
	ftp://ftp5.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/	CA, USA
	ftp://rt.fm/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/			IL, USA

	The release is also available at the master site:

	ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/	Alberta, Canada

	However it is strongly suggested you use a mirror.

   Other mirror sites may take a day or two to update.

2) Connect to that ftp mirror site and go into the directory
   pub/OpenBSD/4.6/ which contains these files and directories.
   This is a list of what you will see:

        ANNOUNCEMENT     armish/          mvme68k/         sparc64/
        Changelogs/      ftplist          mvme88k/         src.tar.gz
        HARDWARE         hp300/           packages/        sys.tar.gz
        PACKAGES         hppa/            ports.tar.gz     tools/
        PORTS            i386/            root.mail        vax/
        README           landisk/         sgi/             xenocara.tar.gz
        alpha/           mac68k/          socppc/          zaurus/
        amd64/           macppc/          sparc/

   It is quite likely that you will want at LEAST the following
   files which apply to all the architectures OpenBSD supports.

        README          - generic README
        HARDWARE        - list of hardware we support
        PORTS           - description of our "ports" tree
        PACKAGES        - description of pre-compiled packages
        root.mail       - a copy of root's mail at initial login.
			  (This is really worthwhile reading).

3) Read the README file.  It is short, and a quick read will make
   sure you understand what else you need to fetch.

4) Next, go into the directory that applies to your architecture,
   for example, i386.  This is a list of what you will see:

	INSTALL.i386    cd46.iso        floppyB46.fs    pxeboot*
	INSTALL.linux   cdboot*         floppyC46.fs    xbase46.tgz
	MD5             cdbr*           game46.tgz      xetc46.tgz
	base46.tgz      cdemu46.iso     index.txt       xfont46.tgz
	bsd*            comp46.tgz      install46.iso   xserv46.tgz
	bsd.mp*         etc46.tgz       man46.tgz       xshare46.tgz
	bsd.rd*         floppy46.fs     misc46.tgz

   If you are new to OpenBSD, fetch _at least_ the file INSTALL.i386
   and the appropriate floppy*.fs or install46.iso files.  Consult the
   INSTALL.i386 file if you don't know which of the floppy images
   you need (or simply fetch all of them).

   If you use the install46.iso file (roughly 200MB in size), then you
   do not need the various *.tgz files since they are contained on that
   one-step ISO-format install CD.

5) If you are an expert, follow the instructions in the file called
   README; otherwise, use the more complete instructions in the
   file called INSTALL.i386.  INSTALL.i386 may tell you that you
   need to fetch other files.

6) Just in case, take a peek at:

        http://www.OpenBSD.org/errata.html

   This is the page where we talk about the mistakes we made while
   creating the 4.6 release, or the significant bugs we fixed
   post-release which we think our users should have fixes for.
   Patches and workarounds are clearly described there.

Note: If you end up needing to write a raw floppy using Windows,
      you can use "fdimage.exe" located in the pub/OpenBSD/4.6/tools
      directory to do so.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- X.ORG FOR MOST ARCHITECTURES -----------------------------------------

X.Org has been integrated more closely into the system.  This release
contains X.Org 7.4.  Most of our architectures ship with X.Org, including
amd64, sparc, sparc64 and macppc.  During installation, you can install
X.Org quite easily.  Be sure to try out xdm(1) and see how we have
customized it for OpenBSD.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- PORTS TREE -----------------------------------------------------------

The OpenBSD ports tree contains automated instructions for building
third party software.  The software has been verified to build and
run on the various OpenBSD architectures.  The 4.6 ports collection,
including many of the distribution files, is included on the 3-CD
set.  Please see the PORTS file for more information.

Note: some of the most popular ports, e.g., the Apache web server
and several X applications, come standard with OpenBSD.  Also, many
popular ports have been pre-compiled for those who do not desire
to build their own binaries (see BINARY PACKAGES, below).

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- BINARY PACKAGES WE PROVIDE -------------------------------------------

A large number of binary packages are provided.  Please see the PACKAGES
file (ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/PACKAGES) for more details.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- SYSTEM SOURCE CODE ---------------------------------------------------

The CD-ROMs contain source code for all the subsystems explained
above, and the README (ftp://ftp.OpenBSD.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.6/README)
file explains how to deal with these source files.  For those who
are doing an FTP install, the source code for all four subsystems
can be found in the pub/OpenBSD/4.6/ directory:

        xenocara.tar.gz     ports.tar.gz   src.tar.gz     sys.tar.gz

------------------------------------------------------------------------
- THANKS ---------------------------------------------------------------

OpenBSD 4.6 includes artwork and CD artistic layout by Ty Semaka,
who also arranged an audio track on the OpenBSD 4.6 CD set.  Ports
tree and package building by Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse, Michael Erdely,
Simon Bertrang, Stuart Henderson, Antoine Jacoutot, Robert Nagy,
Nikolay Sturm, and Christian Weisgerber.  System builds by Theo de Raadt,
Mark Kettenis, and Miod Vallat.  X11 builds by Todd Fries and Miod Vallat.
ISO-9660 filesystem layout by Theo de Raadt.

We would like to thank all of the people who sent in bug reports, bug
fixes, donation cheques, and hardware that we use.  We would also like
to thank those who pre-ordered the 4.6 CD-ROM or bought our previous
CD-ROMs.  Those who did not support us financially have still helped
us with our goal of improving the quality of the software.

Our developers are:

    Alexander Bluhm, Alexander Hall, Alexander von Gernler,
    Alexander Yurchenko, Alexandre Ratchov, Alexey Vatchenko,
    Anders Magnusson, Andreas Gunnarsson, Anil Madhavapeddy,
    Antoine Jacoutot, Ariane van der Steldt, Artur Grabowski,
    Austin Hook, Benoit Lecocq, Bernd Ahlers, Bob Beck, Bret Lambert,
    Can Erkin Acar, Chad Loder, Charles Longeau, Chris Cappuccio,
    Chris Kuethe, Christian Weisgerber, Claudio Jeker,
    Constantine A. Murenin, Dale Rahn, Damien Bergamini, Damien Miller,
    Darren Tucker, David Gwynne, David Hill, David Krause, Eric Faurot,
    Esben Norby, Federico G. Schwindt, Felix Kronlage, Gilles Chehade,
    Giovanni Bechis, Gordon Willem Klok, Hans-Joerg Hoexer,
    Henning Brauer, Ian Darwin, Igor Sobrado, Ingo Schwarze,
    Jacek Masiulaniec, Jacob Meuser, Jakob Schlyter, Janne Johansson,
    Jared Yanovich, Jason Dixon, Jason George, Jason McIntyre,
    Jason Meltzer, Jasper Lievisse Adriaanse, Jim Razmus II, Joel Sing,
    Joerg Goltermann, Johan Mson Lindman, Jolan Luff, Jonathan Gray,
    Jordan Hargrave, Joris Vink, joshua stein, Kenneth R Westerback,
    Kevin Lo, Kevin Steves, Kjell Wooding, Kurt Miller, Landry Breuil,
    Laurent Fanis, Marc Espie, Marco Peereboom, Marco Pfatschbacher,
    Marco S Hyman, Marcus Glocker, Mark Kettenis, Mark Uemura,
    Markus Friedl, Martin Reindl, Martynas Venckus,
    Mathieu Sauve-Frankel, Mats O Jansson, Matthias Kilian,
    Matthieu Herrb, Michael Erdely, Michael Knudsen, Michele Marchetto,
    Mike Larkin, Miod Vallat, Moritz Grimm, Moritz Jodeit,
    Nicholas Marriott, Nick Holland, Nikolay Sturm, Okan Demirmen,
    Oleg Safiullin, Otto Moerbeek, Owain Ainsworth, Paul de Weerd,
    Paul Irofti, Peter Hessler, Peter Stromberg, Peter Valchev,
    Philip Guenther, Pierre-Emmanuel Andre, Pierre-Yves Ritschard,
    Rainer Giedat, Ray Lai, Reyk Floeter, Robert Nagy, Rui Reis,
    Ryan Thomas McBride, Simon Bertrang, Stefan Kempf, Steven Mestdagh,
    Stuart Henderson, Ted Unangst, Theo de Raadt, Thordur I. Bjornsson,
    Tobias Stoeckmann, Tobias Weingartner, Todd C. Miller, Todd Fries,
    Will Maier, William Yodlowsky, Xavier Santolaria, Yojiro Uo

Do not use windows

This is knowledge that is well known to most people in the IT industry, the interesting part is that this knowledge is now being transfered to common people and an article in Washington Post reflect this.

Another part is that a whole industry is built up around securing windows environment. This is mostly done by adding more and more complex infrastructure components that makes the problem even worse.

A simple comparison could be done:

If you are in pain because of a broken leg. Is the solution to eat painkillers or to go to the doctor and get a plaster bandage?  Painkillers are easy to apply, just swallow them. The plaster is  uncomfortable and makes it hard to do what you want. The short term solution is painkiller, the long term solution is fix the root cause of the problem, fix the broken leg.

Continue using windows for business critical solutions and protect it with "patch tuesday", antivirus, rootkit scanners and so on. That is eating painkillers. Remove the vendor lock-in software, that is the long term solution.

A good example of that it is possible to write secure software is OpenBSD where the approach to software development is focusing on security and as they claim on thier homepage "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!".

When I worked as a Tivoli Consultant I spend a lot of time investigating the customer processes and workflow and try to make the monitoring solution to support this. It was often long term projects and involved alot of people like, project managers, support staff, maintenance staff, application owners, applicataion engineers, operating systemens managers, DBAs and so on.

Very often the investigation followed the following principles:

1. Investigate the problem management workflow
2. Document the different parts that builds up the system
3. Find spots where a probe could be inserted to monitor a particular part in the system
4. Define the thresholds for the probe
5. Iterate 3 and 4 until all possible problems in the system could be detected
6. Define who should have which alarm and when ifthe probes shows abnormal behavior.
7. Write the ruleset that implements 7
8. Test
9. Document and hand over to the customer

When it comes to a product like Nagios or op5 Monitor, the product has a built in rule engine that fullfills most of the requirements in the steps above. In most cases it is just a matter of configuration and in some cases some extra scripting.

Solution

I have run into rare cases where the builtin rule engine is not good enough and I have looked for a rule engine that fullfill the following requirements:

• Gnu Public Licence or another acceptable license
• Standalone
• Advanced enough
• Possible to integrate with other solutions like Nagios or op5 Monitor

Now I think I have found a good candidate, NodeBrain and right now I’m testing it.

I will do a follow up article where I describe howto integrate NodeBrain with Nagios or op5 Monitor.

An example

This is as an example of what a rule engine can do:

Webshop example

•  5 webfrontends, 1 or 2 down is OK, 3 is down is WARNING, 4 or 5 down is CRITICAL
• 2 appservers, 1 down is OK, 2 DOWN is CRITICAL
• 3 database backends, 1 down is OK, 2 down is WARNING, 3 down is CRITICAL
• Overall, the layer with the highest severity is the total severerity.

 Implementation:

The ruleset

#Start with webservers
#Set OK
assert weba=0;
assert webb=0;
assert webc=0;
assert webd=0;
assert webe=0;
assert  webserversstatus=0;

#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;
#If any serverstatus is critical the whole webshop is critical
define webshopscritical on(webserversstatus=2 or appserversstatus=2 or dbserversstatus=2) webshopstatus=2;
#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;

Testing:

./nb webshop.nb -
> assert weba=2;
> assert webb=2;
> assert webc=2;
2009/10/02 09:44:42 NB000I Rule webserverswarning fired (webserversstatus=1)
2009/10/02 09:44:42 NB000I Rule webshopwarning fired (webshopstatus=1)
> assert webd=2;
2009/10/02 09:45:06 NB000I Rule webserverscritical fired (webserversstatus=2)
2009/10/02 09:45:06 NB000I Rule webshopscritical fired (webshopstatus=2)
> assert webd=0;
2009/10/02 09:46:27 NB000I Rule webserverswarning fired (webserversstatus=1)
2009/10/02 09:46:27 NB000I Rule webshopwarning fired (webshopstatus=1)
> assert weba=0;
2009/10/02 09:46:32 NB000I Rule webserversok fired (webserversstatus=0)
2009/10/02 09:46:32 NB000I Rule webshopok fired (webshopstatus=0)
> assert appa=2;
> assert appb=2;
2009/10/02 09:47:12 NB000I Rule appserverscritical fired (appserversstatus=2)
2009/10/02 09:47:12 NB000I Rule webshopscritical fired (webshopstatus=2)
> assert weba=2;
2009/10/02 09:47:40 NB000I Rule webserverswarning fired (webserversstatus=1)
> assert webd=2;
2009/10/02 09:48:07 NB000I Rule webserverscritical fired (webserversstatus=2)
> assert appb=0;
2009/10/02 09:49:08 NB000I Rule appserversok fired (appserversstatus=0)
> assert weba=0;
2009/10/02 09:49:33 NB000I Rule webserverswarning fired (webserversstatus=1)
2009/10/02 09:49:33 NB000I Rule webshopwarning fired (webshopstatus=1)
> assert dba=2;
> assert dbb=2;
2009/10/02 09:51:05 NB000I Rule dbserverswarning fired (dbserversstatus=1)
> assert dbc=2;
2009/10/02 09:51:09 NB000I Rule dbservercritical fired (dbserversstatus=2)
2009/10/02 09:51:09 NB000I Rule webshopscritical fired (webshopstatus=2)
> show -t
@ = ! == node
webshopwarning = ! == on(((!(webserversstatus=2))&((!(appserversstatus=2))&(!(dbserversstatus=2))))&((webserversstatus=1)|(dbserversstatus=1))) webshopstatus=1;
webshopscritical = ! == on((webserversstatus=2)|((appserversstatus=2)|(dbserversstatus=2))) webshopstatus=2;
webshopok = ! == on((webserversstatus=0)&((appserversstatus=0)&(dbserversstatus=0))) webshopstatus=0;
webshopstatus = 2
dbservercritical = ! == on(dbservers>=6) dbserversstatus=2;
dbserverswarning = ! == on((dbservers>=4)&(dbservers<6)) dbserversstatus=1;
dbserversok = ! == on(dbservers<=2) dbserversstatus=0;
dbservers = 6 == ((dba+dbb)+dbc)
dbserversstatus = 2
dbc = 2
dbb = 2
dba = 2
appserverscritical = ! == on(appservers>2) appserversstatus=2;
appserversok = ! == on(appservers<=2) appserversstatus=0;
appservers = 2 == (appa+appb)
appserversstatus = 0
appb = 0
appa = 2
webserverscritical = ! == on(webservers>=8) webserversstatus=2;
webserverswarning = ! == on((webservers>4)&(webservers<8)) webserversstatus=1;
webserversok = ! == on(webservers<=4) webserversstatus=0;
webservers = 6 == ((((weba+webb)+webc)+webd)+webe)
webserversstatus = 1
webe = 0
webd = 2
webc = 2
webb = 2
weba = 0

> assert dbc=0;
2009/10/02 09:52:12 NB000I Rule dbserverswarning fired (dbserversstatus=1)
2009/10/02 09:52:12 NB000I Rule webshopwarning fired (webshopstatus=1)
> assert webb=0;
2009/10/02 09:52:31 NB000I Rule webserversok fired (webserversstatus=0)
> assert dba=0;
2009/10/02 09:52:45 NB000I Rule dbserversok fired (dbserversstatus=0)
2009/10/02 09:52:45 NB000I Rule webshopok fired (webshopstatus=0)

Links

• NodeBrain
• NodeBrain tutorial

To start a script in the default run levels:

sudo update-rc.d appname defaults

To remove a script from all runlevels:

sudo update-rc.d appname remove

I have read the book "Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring, Monitor your network with ease!" by Dinangkur Kundu and S.M.Ibrahim Lavlu. The book is 116 pages.

According to the book the target audience for this book is for anyone who wants to manage a network using Cacti. To read the book you do not need to be a Linux Guru. And I agree, even if it probably helps if you have basic knowledge of Linux/UNIX, RRD, MySQL and SNMP.

Many of the OpenSource software projects out there is excellent but usually require a rather skilled person or a very interested person with alot of time to start working. Downloading the software and start reading the manual that comes with the software is often quite hard and a book like this narrow that gap and make a complex software like Cacti easier to use.

I find the Cacti GUI sometimes very cumbersome and this book, with its step by step guides to setup, makes graphing of network attached devices easy. The book explains how Cacti works and the underlaying technology like RRD well. RRD is the excellent Round Robin Database and tool and it is created by Tobias Oetiker. What I’m lacking is that when it has described the basics, it stops.  I would really like a deeper explanation of RRD because Cacti is a graphing tool which uses RRD and a deeper knowledge of RRD would make your graphs better and give you the information you want.

I also lack the deeper explanation of advanced Cacti topics like SNMP query XML syntax and other topics.The book is only 116 pages and in my opinion the book would be much more valuable if 50 extra pages would have been used to dig deeper into more advanced topics and explain more extensive what al the options in Cacti means.

I really miss a howto for Cacti addons like wethermaps, weathermaps is taking Cacti another step in visualiation of complex data.

I would recommend this book for newbies into Cacti that will get ther first graphs implementation a boost, for anyone that has used Cacti I would go for the RRD homepage, Cacti homepage and Cacti forums, blogs and other sources on internet.

Links:

• To buy the book Cacti 0.8 Network Monitoring, Monitor your network with ease!
• An example Chapter 4, creating and using templates
• Cacti homepage
• Cacti Forum
• RRD tools
• op5 Statistics, a supported version of Cacti

op5 Monitor is based on Nagios*, the industry standard for enterprise-class IT infrastructure monitoring. Until now, op5 Monitor has had to rely on the basics of standard Nagios Graphical User Interface (GUI) for presentation and overall user experience. With the release of op5 Monitor 4.2 we include a fully functional preview of a brand new GUI, now based on the Ninja Open Source project. The new GUI is based on a modern PHP architecture and is now shipped for real operation testing.

Usability, flexibility and visualization probably stands for more then 80% of overall customer value. Our solutions for full control of our customers IT systems hold a huge amount of both historical data and instant events. Making this information accessible and easy to understand for as many as possible is the single most effective value for our customers. And who is better to give us important feedback on GUI related features and functions then our customers? This is why we now choose to include an early version for test, evaluation and feedback purposes, all to secure the best for the coming official release of Monitor 5.0 later this year, says Jan Josephson, CEO op5 AB.

The new GUI with its flexible interface based on the PHP framework makes it much easier to provide customizations for customers specific needs. With the introduction of widget and support session based authentication it is now possible to fully personalize views and settings. The widget technology further provides a future standard way for two way synchronization and presentation of customer unique data and the presentation of it.

The ability to search, sort and filter vast data volumes has been greatly improved with pagination for views of hosts and services and the possibility to sort by column. The new improved search feature includes auto suggestion and let you search on hosts, services host groups and service groups.
These changes greatly improves the possibilities to answer to customer needs and to develop customized features that has not been possible until now due to the restrictions from the old GUI.
A new module for network visualization (the NagVis project) has been included in op5 Monitor 4.2. You can now visualize your infrastructure using three different map types;

• Auto map, a auto drawn topology map using parent / child relationships.
• Static Map makes it possible to put any object (host, service, host group or service group) on an image of choice.
• Geo map, uses Google maps API, drawing a map by using addresses or gps coordinates on your monitored objects. Object and status information as well as links can be included in the map. The maps can be visualized as widgets on the tactical overview or be used on big monitors in operation centers.
• Largest OSS-project in Network Monitoring, Nagios.

About op5 AB op5 AB is a world leading OSM – Open Source Management – company that delivers software based on open source for control of IT systems and networks. Its main products are op5 Monitor, op5 Statistics and op5 LogServer. The products are based on open source code that op5 further develops, packages, and sells as complete products and systems with services and support. p5 has a large selection of primarily European clients from different market segments for example AGA Linde Gas, The Swedish Customs Service (Tullverket) and other parastatals, several county councils, municipalities and municipal companies. op5 was founded in 2003. The company is based in Sweden with offices in Stockholm and Gothenburg.

www.op5.com