[hobbit] ext hobbit client scripts

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 09:57:51PM -0500, Craig Cook wrote:
> Given the new client design of sending "raw" data back to the sever 
> so it can decide what the status should be...
> 
> How can I extend this concept and write an external client script 
> with the same logic...
> 
> ie. a custom mysql status script that just sends its data back 
> to the central server.  The server must analyse it somehow and 
> set the status message

You need to write two programs:

1) The client side tool that collects the data. Run it as a client
   extension, and have it send back the data in using a "data"
   message. I.e. 
      $BB $BBDISP "data $MACHINE.mydata"

2) A Hobbit server module to process the data.


Server modules are all of those programs in hobbitlaunch.cfg
that runs "hobbitd_channel --channel=X hobbitd_bla". For a start,
try running 
  ~hobbit/server/bin/bbcmd hobbitd_channel --channel=data cat
(you must be logged in as the hobbit user). This just dumps the
incoming "data" messages to the console. You'll see it looks like
this:

@@data#18078|1126595825.225133|127.0.0.1||voodoo.hswn.dk|mydata
<the contents of the data message>
@@

The first line always has
   @@data#Seq.no.|Timestamp|SenderIP|Origin|Hostname|Type
and the message ends with "@@"

"Origin" is currently not used and will always be blank.

So your server module - written in C, Perl, Ruby or whatever your
favourite programming language is - now has access to the full
data message sent by your client, and hence it can parse the data
and build a "status" message to generate the final status.

For debugging, You can start/stop modules without having to restart
Hobbit - just run the "hobbitd_channel ..." command on the command line.

-- 
Henrik Storner