[GLLUG] gnip (server monitoring program)

[Marshal Newrock]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Hampton, Rodney wrote:

> Marshall,
>
> Since I do a fair bit of enterprise level monitoring allow me to add a few
> comments.
> 1) Create a user account on the remote machine (say WebMon for example)
> 2) Your monitoring machine can ping the remote machine, but it can also
> telnet or ssh to the remote machine (it isn't hard to create an expect
> script that does this)
> 3) You know if the telnet or ssh login is successful that the remote machine
> is up since it had to at least create a shell account and therefore is not
> just a dead machine responding to pings because the networking stack is
> still OK.
> 4) It is much easier to add functionality like having the monitoring machine
> log into the remote machine being monitored and fire off a script or run
> something like vmstat, ps, lsof, etc.
> 5) Updates to the monitoring machine can be accomplished from a central
> location.  Under your paradigm you would need to push out updates to your
> program to ALL of the remote machines.
>
> Just my 0.02

Your input is certainly welcome.  I'm not an expert programmer, and much
of what I've done in this program I've learned or figured out as I went.
If someone finds it useful, that's icing on the cake.  If someone finds
problems with it, I've learned something else.  :)

I have in mind for gnip to be a very lightweight program.  Right now, of
course, I have no idea how many machines it can monitor before it starts
having problems.  The setup on the machines it watches is as simple as an
entry in /etc/crontab, and that should never change, especially if CNAMEs
are used for the gnip machines.  I still recommend at least two machines
with gnip, a main and another to make sure the main doesn't go down.  I
don't foresee any additional functionality other than listening for pings,
unless additional methods of reporting are desired (currently stdout,
syslog, and email are available).

I'd also say that in your comments above, 3 and 4 can be simplified with
'ssh user at host command', especially if you're using public key
authentication.

Thanks for taking a look.  :)

-- 
Marshal Newrock, unemployed Linux user in Lansing, MI
Caution: Product will be hot after heating