[Xymon] Any way to do http tests with HEAD request?

[J.C. Cleaver]

Thinking about it, this might be something that's not too difficult to add
into xymonnet either. A HEAD is basically just a GET from the poller's
perspective, and any evaluation on body contents (or lack thereof) is
semantically identical to the configuration options available now.

An open question is what the best way to indicate that this is a
"HEAD-only" test would be.

It could be something applied to the entire host line (like browser=),
made into a separate column (similar to httpstatus= or post=, except
without the... POST), or another per-URL protocol specifier similar to how
the TLS/SSL configuration is handled.

(I could see use cases for all three, although I think the middle option
might be the most manageable.)


For now, however, this is something that would need to be handled via an
external script.


Regards,

-jc



On Mon, April 13, 2015 1:45 pm, Andrew Rakowski wrote:
> Thanks for the reply Jeremy.  I thought about making a "httphead" test in
> the protocols.cfg file, and using the "curl" utility to do what BigBrother
> used to do, but I don't see how to pass the URL to the test.
>
> Is there some implicit passing of test URL to these protocols.cfg defined
> tests (like the string from the hosts.cfg file is stuck at the end of the
> invoked command taken from protocols.cfg?)  I don't see any examples in
> the file, and it looks like everything just sends canned strings.
>
> In this case, I'd want to run the "curl" command like this:
>
>      /usr/bin/curl -g -s -S -m 45 -I -k --connect-timeout 15
>
> with the URL taken from the hosts.cfg line, which looks like this:
>
>      0.0.0.0         xyz-web2 # noconn --timeout=15
> https://xyz.somewhere.com/xyz/portal/user/anon/js_peid/123456789/panel/Main/template/content
>
> so that webpage could be tested by the curl utility, which is configured
> to send only a "HEAD" request to the web server (the '-I' option.)  That
> curl command is what was being used in BigBrother.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -Andrew
>
>
> On Thu, 9 Apr 2015, Jeremy Laidman wrote:
>
>> On 10 April 2015 at 11:19, Andrew Rakowski <landrew at pnnl.gov> wrote:
>>       I didn't understand why nobody was complaining previously, until I
>> saw that BigBro
>>       was set up to use the "curl" command with the "-I" option (aka the
>> "--head" option)
>>       to send a "HEAD" request to the server.  The BigBro web test used
>> this setting:
>>
>>
>> This was one of the problems with BigBro - it forked to external
>> programs to do the probes which
>> doesn't scale, whereas xymonnet does it all internally.
>>
>> Alas, xymonnet sends either a POST or a GET request, and this cannot be
>> modified by
>> configuration.
>>
>> I can see two options for you.  One is to do your own curl/wget call
>> with a HEAD request, in a
>> script.  The other option is to define your own "http" protocol
>> definition in protocols.cfg and
>> use that.  You would probably need to name it something other than
>> "http" otherwise xymonnet
>> will use its internal protocol code rather than what's defined in
>> protocols.cfg.
>>
>> J
>>
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