[Xymon] IP address in bb-host file

[henrik at hswn.dk]

On Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:30:34 -0800, "Mike Cavanagh"
<mike at terrapintesting.com> wrote:
> Please comment on pros/cons to using 0.0.0.0 for "all" hosts vs. the
> actual IP address in the bb-hosts file?
> I see I can use 0.0.0.0 for an IP and Xymon will lookup the IP address.

Xymon will do a DNS lookup on the hostname, unless you explicitly use the
"testip" tag on a host.

The presence of an IP in the hosts.cfg / bb-hosts file is a remnant from
the days when Xymon was an add-on to the "Big Brother" system - this system
relied on the IP in the bb-hosts file for network testing. Although Xymon
has evolved a lot, it has retained much of the configuration file format
from the Big Brother days, including this.

Currently, the only advantage of having the IP in the bb-hosts file is
that this will be used as a "fall-back" IP in case the DNS lookup fails. So
there really is no problem in just having "0.0.0.0" as the IP.

I have some plans to re-do the configuration system for Xymon v5, and one
of the changes that will happen is probably that the mandatory IP-address
in hosts.cfg will disappear, so you only need to specify it when it will
actually be used.


Regards,
Henrik