To do this you’ll need to copy over the following binarys from the server installation into your client’s bin directory:

• bbtest-net
• hobbitping

You’ll also need a copy of your bb-hosts and bb-services file, you’ll need to place these in your client’s etc folder. In your bb-hosts file you’ll only need the hosts that are within the private network you intend to ping, you really don’t need any grouping information within it either since when the data is sent in to your xymon server it will be assigned to the correct hosts there.

At this point you need to add a section for bbnet within your clientlaunch.cfg, yours may be different since your file locations my vary, so edit to fit your situation:

[bbnet]
ENVFILE /usr/lib/hobbit/client/etc/clientlaunch.cfg
CMD /usr/lib/hobbit/client/bin/bbtest-net --report --ping --checkresponse
LOGFILE $BBSERVERLOGS/bb-network.log
INTERVAL 5m

Since bbtest-net needs to know what to do you’ll need to copy its configuration section from hobbitserver.cfg to hobbitclient.cfg:

# For bbtest-net
CONNTEST="TRUE"
IPTEST_2_CLEAR_ON_FAILED_CONN="TRUE"
NONETPAGE=""
FPING="/usr/sbin/fping"
NTPDATE="ntpdate"
TRACEROUTE="traceroute"
BBROUTERTEXT="router"
NETFAILTEXT="not OK"

And there you have it – restart your client and it should be able to ping the clients within the private network and send to your Xymon server.  You’ll notice a column for bbtest show up for the client you setup to ping as well.   This should work for all network tests, however I’ve just tested ping.

Total Slots: 2
Total Used Slots: 2

Queue: MainQueue
Slots: 2
Reserved Slots: 0
Used Slots: 2

The master is the same, but contains information for the entire cluster. When all slots are taken, the test icon/color turns to ‘green’, when some are available the test icon/color changes to ‘clear’ I’ve also created an easy to understand graph which consists of a green area that is the total number of slots, which a red area over it showing the used slots. As slots free up the green shows itself noting there are slots available.

The Script is available for download here.

The Graph definitions are:

[sge]
TITLE SGE Used Slots
YAXIS # Used Slots
DEF:SlotsUsed=sge.rrd:TotalUsedSlots:AVERAGE
DEF:SlotsTotal=sge.rrd:TotalSlots:AVERAGE
AREA:SlotsTotal#00CC00:Total Slots
AREA:SlotsUsed#FF0000:Used Slots
COMMENT:\n
GPRINT:SlotsUsed:LAST:Used Slots  : %5.1lf (cur)
GPRINT:SlotsUsed:MAX: : %5.1lf (max)
GPRINT:SlotsUsed:MIN: : %5.1lf (min)
GPRINT:SlotsUsed:AVERAGE: : %5.1lf (avg)\n
GPRINT:SlotsTotal:LAST:Total Slots   : %5.1lf (cur)
GPRINT:SlotsTotal:MAX: : %5.1lf (max)
GPRINT:SlotsTotal:MIN: : %5.1lf (min)
GPRINT:SlotsTotal:AVERAGE: : %5.1lf (avg)\n

Update: I’ve modified my script to NOT change colors.  Seems xymon really ignores whatever you sent in since it really thinks you have no data when you turn to ‘clear’ – it was breaking my graphs.

Since I’ve had to write quite a few of these I thought I’d share a simple recipe for getting started with these scripts.   Most all our scripts are written in Perl, its just what I’m used too and what most people in our company is fluent in.   Our older scripts (from when we actually ran Big Brother) are almost all shell scripts and I have written at least one in Python since that particular service’s library was in python.   For this example I’m going to use Perl default template:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#############################################################################
# $Id: $
#############################################################################
use strict;

## BB and related test constants
#############################################################################

use constant GREEN => 'green';
use constant YELLOW => 'yellow';
use constant RED => 'red';

## BB Global variables
#############################################################################

my $prev_run_log = "$ENV{BBTMP}/$ENV{MACHINE}.lighttpd.data";
my $bbtest = 'testname';
my $color = GREEN;
my $status = $bbtest . " OK";

## Main Program
#############################################################################
{

my $DATA = "";

## TEST STUFF HERE

## Send to Hobbit
#############################################################################
my $report_date = `/bin/date`;
chomp($report_date);

system("$ENV{BB} $ENV{BBDISP} 'status $ENV{MACHINE}.$bbtest $color $report_date - $status\n\n$DATA'\n");

}

This script by itself will send a test called ‘testname’, which is green and has the status of ‘OK’.  Since we have not defined anything to test it won’t contain any data with it.  To run this script you need to be within Xymon’s “shell”, which is basically sh, with some enviroment variables set.  To get there, go to ’bin’ directory within your hobbit client installation, in my case this is: “/home/hobbit/client/bin”, you’ll need to run ‘bbcmd’, this will drop you to a prompt which looks something like this:

[rar@apollo bin]$ ./bbcmd
2009-05-09 10:10:35 Using default environment file /home/hobbit/client/etc/hobbitclient.cfg
sh-3.2$

Lets change the test name to something else and gather some data from the system we are running on.   To change the test name to say ‘modules’, just change the $bbtest to ‘modules’.   How about testing what kernel modules are loaded – or basically just parse the output of ‘lsmod’.   To do this we’d need to capture the output of the command, this is easy enough in perl, something like this would work just fine:

my $lsmod = `/sbin/lsmod`;

With the output of ’lsmod’ captured we can do whatever we want with it.  Lets say we just want the modules, and no other info about them in an array:

my $lsmod = `/sbin/lsmod`;
my @modules = split(/\n/, $lsmod);
my @module_names;

foreach my $module (@modules){
my ($name, $junk) = split(/\s.+/, $module);
push @module_names, $name;
}

Now that we have our array created that we can easily loop through for tests, lets run a test on them to see if we have loaded any modules for ‘ext’ file systems:

foreach my $module (@module_names) {
if ($module =~ "ext"){
$color = RED;
$status = $bbtest . " NOT OK"
}
}

OK,  since we’d like a list of modules that are loaded on our hobbit test page, we can add all those modules to the ‘$DATA’ variable, and finish off this example test.  Within that last look we added, you’d just push that modules name into ‘$DATA’:

[...]
$status = $bbtest . " NOT OK"
}

$DATA .= $module . "\n";
}

So what kindof output does this give us?  If you want to just see what would be run in the system() call at the bottom of the script, just change ‘system’ to ‘print’, the output should be something like the following:

/home/hobbit/client/bin/bb hobbitserver.xipnet.net 'status apollo.modules red Sat May  9 10:35:18 EDT 2009 - modules NOT OK

Module
iptable_filter
ip_tables
rfcomm
l2cap
bluetooth
af_packet
nf_conntrack_netbios_ns
ipt_REJECT
nf_conntrack_ipv4
xt_state
nf_conntrack
ip6t_REJECT
xt_tcpudp
ip6table_filter
ip6_tables
x_tables
ipv6
binfmt_misc
dm_multipath
parport_pc
lp
parport
nvram
evbug
usbcore
ext3
jbd
mbcache
evdev
raid10
raid456
async_xor
async_memcpy
async_tx
xor
raid1
raid0
multipath
linear
md_mod
dm_mirror
dm_snapshot
dm_mod
fuse
loop
8250
serial_core
'

Now the test is red and has the status of “NOT OK” since we tested for any ext file system and I’m running ext3.   To have the data sent to hobbit, simply set the print back to a system call and setup the approprate section within ‘clientlaunch.cfg’, for our example I’d use:

[modules]
ENVFILE $HOBBITCLIENTHOME/etc/hobbitclient.cfg
CMD $HOBBITCLIENTHOME/ext/bb-modules.pl
LOGFILE $HOBBITCLIENTHOME/logs/hobbitclient.log
INTERVAL 5m

I know this is a pretty basic example, but its a place to start – just let the imagination go from here on the millions of tests you could come up with.  Keep in mind I’m sending this data in on the “status” channel in Xymon – there is also a “data” channel which won’t create a column and with the test approprately setup within hobbit to capture its data to rrd’s, you can create graphs that just show up in the “trends” column if alarming is not necessary.

The Graph definition is as follows:

[lighttpd]
TITLE lighttpd Requests/Second
YAXIS # reqs/sec
DEF:RPS=lighttpd.rrd:reqpersec:AVERAGE
LINE2:RPS#0000CC:reqs/sec
COMMENT:
GPRINT:RPS:LAST:Requests per Second   : %5.1lf (cur)
GPRINT:RPS:MAX: : %5.1lf (max)
GPRINT:RPS:MIN: : %5.1lf (min)
GPRINT:RPS:AVERAGE: : %5.1lf (avg)

The Xymon scripts source code is:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#############################################################################
# $Id: mi-lighttpd.pl 21 2009-05-07 19:22:28Z rar $
#############################################################################

use strict;
use File::Slurp;
use LWP::Simple;
use Data::Dumper;

my $port = 80;
my $bbtest = 'lighttpd';

#############################################################################
## BB and related test constants
#############################################################################

use constant CLEAR  => 'clear';
use constant GREEN =>  'green';
use constant YELLOW => 'yellow';
use constant RED    => 'red';
use constant PURPLE => 'purple';

{

#############################################################################
## Setup Variables
#############################################################################
	my $DATA    = "";
	my $color   = GREEN;
	my $status  = $bbtest . " OK";
	my $previous_run;
	my $current_run;
	my $restarted   = 0;
	my @delta_tests = ( 'total_kbytes', 'total_accesses', 'uptime' );
	my @counter_tests   = ( 'total_accesses', 'total_kbytes', 'uptime', 'reqpersec' );
	my @write_log;
	my $backup_log    = "$ENV{BBTMP}/$ENV{MACHINE}.lighttpd.data";
	my %lighttpd_states = (
		'_' => 'awaiting_conn',
		'.' => 'connect',
		'r' => 'reading_req',
		'R' => 'reading_req_post',
		's' => 'sending_reply',
		'S' => 'sending_reply_end',
		'q' => 'request_start',
		'Q' => 'request_end',
		'W' => 'write',
		'h' => 'handle_request',
		'C' => 'close',
		'E' => 'hard_error',
	);
	my %error_states = (
		'reqpersec' => '100',
		'sending_reply' => '100'
	);

	my %warn_states = (
		'reqpersec' => '75',
		'sending_reply' => '75'
	);

#############################################################################
## Gather previous run data & current data
#############################################################################

	# Get Last Status
	if ( -e $backup_log ) {

		#Split Apart Data
		my @data = read_file($backup_log);
		if (@data) {
			foreach my $line (@data) {
				chomp($line);
				my ( $key, $value ) = split( /=/, $line, 2 );
				$previous_run->{$key} = $value;
			}
		}
		else {
			$previous_run = 0;
		}
	}

	my $status_data = get "http://localhost:$port/server-status?auto";

#############################################################################
## Munge the data up to get what we want
#############################################################################

	if ( defined($status_data) ) {

		my @data = split( /n/, $status_data );
		foreach my $line (@data) {
			chomp($line);
			my ( $key, $value ) = split( /: /, $line );
			$key =~ s/ /_/g;
			$key = lc($key);
			$current_run->{$key} = $value;
		}

		# Create array of new values to save for our next run
		foreach ( keys %{$current_run} ) {
			push @write_log, "$_=$current_run->{$_}n";
		}

		# Calculate Incremental Data
		if ($previous_run) {
			# We need to check if we restarted here to avoid negitives
			if ($current_run->{uptime} > $previous_run->{uptime} ){
				foreach (@delta_tests) {
						$current_run->{$_} = $current_run->{$_} - $previous_run->{$_};
				}
			}
			else {
				$status = $bbtest . " Restarted";
				$color = YELLOW;
				$restarted = 1;
			}
		}

		# Break out scoreboard data
		foreach ( keys %lighttpd_states ) {
			$current_run->{ $lighttpd_states{$_} } = 0;
		}
		foreach ( split( //, $current_run->{scoreboard} ) ) {
			$current_run->{ $lighttpd_states{$_} }++;
		}

		if ( !$restarted ) {
			# Get Req/Sec since last check
			$current_run->{reqpersec} = sprintf "%.2F", ( $current_run->{total_accesses} / $current_run->{uptime} ) if $current_run->{uptime};

			## save our counter tests for the next run incase we
			## lighttpd gets restarted we have some non-zero data to send in
			foreach (@counter_tests) {
				push @write_log, "cur_$_=$current_run->{$_}n";
			}    

			# Check for warning states
			foreach ( keys %warn_states ) {
				if ( $current_run->{$_} > $warn_states{$_} ) {
					$color  = YELLOW;
					$status = $bbtest . " $_ > $warn_states{$_}";
				}
			}

			# Check for error states
			foreach ( keys %error_states ) {
				if ( $current_run->{$_} > $error_states{$_} ) {
					$color  = RED;
					$status = $bbtest . " $_ > $error_states{$_}";
				}
			}
		}
		else {
			## So we restarted, and we don't want to send nothing
			## and we don't want to send negitives on calculated tests
			## since we saved them last run for this purpose, we'll send in
			## our last run stats to keep from having huge drops in the
			## graphs.
			foreach (@counter_tests) {
				$current_run->{$_} = sprintf "%.2F", $previous_run->{ "cur_".$_ };
			}
		}

		# Delete Some Unwanted Data
		delete $current_run->{scoreboard};
		delete $current_run->{uptime};

		# Create Hobbit Data
		foreach ( sort keys %{$current_run} ) {
			$DATA .= "$_:$current_run->{$_}n";
		}

		# Actually Write last run file
		write_file( $backup_log, @write_log );

	}
	else {
		$status = $bbtest . " unable to get server-status";
		$color  = CLEAR;
	}

#############################################################################
## Give data to hobbit
#############################################################################

	# hobbit formatted output
	my $report_date = `/bin/date`;
	chomp($report_date);

	## DEV DEBUG
	#print "$ENV{BB} $ENV{BBDISP} 'status apollo,xipnet,net.$bbtest $color $report_date - $statusnn$DATA'n";
	system("$ENV{BB} $ENV{BBDISP} 'status apollo,xipnet,net.$bbtest $color $report_date - $statusnn$DATA'n");
}