[hobbit] Ports data from other platforms

[Henrik Stoerner]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 10:30:43AM -0600, Rich Smrcina wrote:
> I want to be able to provide ports data to Hobbit from the mainframe 
> operating systems.  They do not have and 'standard' Hobbit client nor do 
> they present the equivalent of 'netstat' in the way that Linux does.
> 
> I can reformat the 'netstat' into the Linux way, that's not a problem. 
> What I would like to know is how to present this data to Hobbit so that 
> it shows up properly in the ports column (with server based 
> configuration and optional tracking capabilities).
> 
> Is it as simple as sending the data as a 'ports' test or do I need to 
> create a 'client' package and send it.  

You need to send data in the "client" format. Also, in order for your
"client" message to be handled by the Hobbit server, there needs to be a
backend processor on the Hobbit server that recognizes the OS reporting
the data. All of these are currently embedded in the hobbitd_client
binary; the source files for each OS are in the hobbitd/client/*.c
files.

However, if your data is like some Unix/Linux data, then writing a
client backend will be really simple. You can look at some of the
existing backend modules; even with very little knowledge of C it should
be easy to cut-paste-modify an existing module and make it work with
your OS.  That, and a trivial change to hobbitd/hobbitd_client.c 
to make it call your OS backend.

> If so, is the format the same as 
> the 'client data' link with just that text data in the message?

Exactly. The "client data" text data is just a raw dump of the message
that the clients send to the Hobbit server.


Regards,
Henrik