[hobbit] Current development plans

[Deal, Richard]

I would really like to have the option of a client on the unix world.  
Having a central machine poll all of the clients constantly a far less
distributed system than running remote clients.  I prefer a locally run
client from an NFS mounted area were I can centrally control each with
the config files.

I agree, on the snmp situation, BB/Hobbits strengths are in scripts and
ext's snmp should be an ext to Hobbit.  

My only concern about changing the BB protocols would be to make it
optional and not to make adding EXT scripts more difficult.

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel J McDonald [mailto:dan.mcdonald at austinenergy.com] 
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 8:18 AM
To: Hobbit List
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Current development plans

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 15:58 +1000, Adam Goryachev wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 07:41 +0200, Henrik Stoerner wrote:

> 
> Personally, I'd most like to see a 'free' client (ie, GPL, without the
> BB license issue),

Ditto, but I'd really like the bb-central approach.  Most of the status
information can be grabbed from non-privileged accounts on all unix-like
platforms.  I concede that a client is necessary in the windows world.

>  and I'd also like to see *much* better SNMP support.
> ie, point it at a router, and it will automatically (or some tool)
setup
> the various values to monitor (interfaces, byte counter thresholds,
cpu,
> temperature, etc) or a switch, or firewall, or UPS, or whatever
> thingamabob you have lying around.

Although I'd love to see a "better mrtg", I'd hate to re-invent the
wheel on that one.  It would be nice if the mrtg folks would add
snmp-v3, but that's not in the offing today.

But I have a set of cfgmaker templates that I use to do pretty much what
you are asking.  It's got a few complex scripts wrapped around it.  By
policy every device has a unique snmp string, so I have a huge database
with hostnames, community strings, and device-types that allows me to
generate my mrtg and hobbit configurations on the fly. 

> Finally, what about some sort of compression/encryption protocol, 

If we are building an extended protocol, we should support
authentication as well.  That's been a serious hole in bb for a long
time - any hacker who sees that you are trusting bb for monitoring can
simply send spoofed status messages to either distract you from the real
mischief or hide it from obvious view. 


-- 
Daniel J McDonald, CCIE # 2495, CNX
Austin Energy

dan.mcdonald at austinenergy.com


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