[Xymon] Dependencies for xymond and xymonnet (with particular reference to JC's terabithia.org RPMs)

[J.C. Cleaver]

Hi,

Yes, in a case such as yours the main xymon server RPM is going to pull in
a few things that you don't need. Primarily, it's httpd (and whatever
httpd pulls in, such as apr and whatnot) and rrdtool (and cairo, some
display libs).

The reason httpd is a hard dependency is that some things are configured
to be owned by the apache user, and the xymon.conf apache snippet is
dropped in the directory.

It should be safe to install xymon with --nodeps to bypass those two
packages, although you'll get some complaints as it installs. Assuming
you're running ping checks, you'll want to manually pull in 'fping'. You
can ignore net-snmp-libs if you're not going to be using
xymon-snmpcollect.

The semanage stuff from policycoreutils-python is SELinux. Aside from the
error output, it should be safe to ignore that as well.


Alas, you're correct in that yum will attempt to continue to pull in
dependencies when they're available, so you'll continue to get these
warnings.


I'd given consideration to splitting things out into xymon-xymonnet,
xymon-proxy, xymon-server, xymon-xymongen and the like (in fact, a really,
really old version of the RPM did just that), but it really felt like more
complexity (and effort) than it was worth, especially since the upstream
had had unified things together.

If there's enough demand, I'm open to creating sub-packages for it. But it
does rather significantly increase complexity for people doing installs
since they have to think of the different components coming in. The flip
side is that for cases such as yours, or in micro-sized cloud/container
environments, you can install the base RPM and avoid bringing in other
dependencies.


One thing I can fix right away, though is wrapping the errors out of the
semanage calls. Although the RPM is built with SELinux in mind, if the
toolset isn't present there's no reason to annoy the user with the
messages. I'll put that in the next update for sure.



Regards,

-jc





On Thu, March 12, 2015 11:28 am, SebA wrote:
> Hi JC,
>
> This may be off-topic for everyone else as I'm talking about an unofficial
> RPM (I know), but just to get this into the mailing list archive...
>
> I want to install xymon server on a system, but it will be forwarding its
> results to another xymon server and therefore I have no need for web
> pages,
> RRD files, etc.  In fact, I think I only need xymond, xymonnet and an
> add-on
> monitor.  (Plus xymon-client.)  When I try and install your RPM, it wants
> to
> install all sorts of things I don't want like apache and libX11 (see
> below).
>
> Installing:
>  xymon
> Installing for dependencies:
>  apr
>  apr-util
>  apr-util-ldap
>  audit-libs-python
>  cairo
>  dejavu-fonts-common
>  dejavu-lgc-sans-mono-fonts
>  dejavu-sans-mono-fonts
>  fontconfig
>  fontpackages-filesystem
>  fping
>  freetype
>  httpd
>  httpd-tools
>  libX11
>  libX11-common
>  libXau
>  libXft
>  libXrender
>  libcgroup
>  libselinux-python
>  libsemanage-python
>  libthai
>  libxcb
>  mailcap
>  net-snmp-libs
>  pango
>  pixman
>  policycoreutils-python
>  rrdtool
>  setools-libs
>  setools-libs-python
>
> Transaction Summary
> =============================
> Install      33 Package(s)
>
> How should I do a minimal install?  (I have your repo mirrored, but you
> can't exclude dependencies with yum AFAIK.)  I just did a:
>
> # sudo rpm -i fping-3.10-2.el6.x86_64.rpm
> <no errors>
> # sudo rpm -i --nodeps xymon-4.3.18-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
> <output below>
> warning: user apache does not exist - using root
> warning: group apache does not exist - using root
> warning: user apache does not exist - using root
> warning: group apache does not exist - using root
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 30: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 31: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 32: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 33: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 34: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 35: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
> /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.5gv8Df: line 36: /usr/sbin/semanage: No such file or
> directory
>
> Realizing that I probably needed /usr/sbin/semanage at least, I did:
>
> # sudo rpm -e xymon
> warning: /etc/xymon/hosts.cfg saved as /etc/xymon/hosts.cfg.rpmsave
> # sudo rm -fR /etc/xymon
> # sudo yum install setools-libs-python
> # sudo yum install policycoreutils-python
>
> And what the heck, it's just one package that I may use and xymon wants it
> directly, rather than a dependency of a dependency, so:
> # sudo yum install net-snmp-libs
>
> # sudo rpm -i --nodeps xymon-4.3.18-1.el6.x86_64.rpm
> warning: user apache does not exist - using root
> warning: group apache does not exist - using root
> warning: user apache does not exist - using root
> warning: group apache does not exist - using root
>
>
> Should I have any problems that you foresee?
>
> Thanks and kind regards,
>
> SebA
>
>