[Xymon] Version 5 with IPv6 - anyone for testing? And some news ...

[Henrik Størner]

On 24-07-2013 08:07, Christian Herzog wrote:
>> On 22-07-2013 08:53, Christian Herzog wrote:
>>> - do you have any indication when v5 will be ready for prime time
>>
>> Barring unforeseen events, I think there will be a version ready for
>> testing mid-september. It will probably require some shakedown,
>> since there is a lot of new code, but a release during the autumn
>> should be possible.

> thanks a lot for this encouraging update. We'll stand by with our test setup,
> ready to get our hands dirty.

Okay .... if you really want to get dirty, then I have some code waiting 
for all of you to test. Head over to http://www.xymon.com/misc/ and grab 
the 4.3.99.<date> tar-file.

(Or grab the latest trunk from Sourceforge's SVN archive).

NOTE: I strongly recommend that you run this in a test setup - or at 
least be prepared to break your current installation. At least, backup 
your xymon installation directory and the *.chk files in the server/tmp/ 
directory.


Building it should be well-known, except that you need two more 
libraries: The new network test module uses an SQLite3 database 
internally, and xymond now needs the "zlib" library - so those must be 
installed, including any "developer" packages.

On Debian, I have the libsqlite3-0:amd64, libsqlite3-dev:amd64 and 
sqlite3 packages for SQLite3; and the zlib1g:amd64 and zlib1g-dev:amd64 
packages for zlib.


make - make install


Make sure that the xymond/etcfiles/protocols2.cfg file is installed in 
you server/etc/ directory. The old protocols.cfg is no longer used.

Make sure the server/bin/fping4 and fping6 programs are suid-root; if 
not then "chown 0 server/bin/fping*; chmod u+s server/bin/fping*" as root.

Start Xymon and see what happens :-o


The new network module runs as a daemon, so don't be surprised that it 
runs all the time. xymonnet2 does the normal network checks (tcp tests), 
and the "netmodule ping" job handles all of the ping checks.

"ping" status is now reported in a "ping" column. This will change 
before the final release.

If a host has both an IPv4 and IPv6 address, then Xymon will test the 
IPv4 address only. You cannot change that right now.

SSL certificate status is not yet there. We have the data, but don't 
generate the status update yet.

LDAP- and RPC-checks are not implemented yet.

Some of the more exotic details are also missing, e.g. pinging hosts 
with multiple IP's.


What I am most interested in right now is - does it work at all ? Does 
it crash ? You'll probably need to add "--debug" options to the new 
commands, but be warned: There's a lot of debug output.


Now a bit of personal news: Those of you who have followed Xymon 
development over the years may know that I have been working for CSC 
while writing Xymon. Xymon has been used a lot at CSC here in 
Copenhagen, so doing special Xymon customisation was also part of my 
work there.

But times are changing, and I have decided to leave CSC. On Thursday I 
start in a new job at KMD - a local danish IT company providing IT 
services for a lot of danish public-sector companies, but also moving in 
to the general outsourcing business.

My new employer knows about the work I do on Xymon, and although I 
probably won't be able to work in Xymon as part of my employment, it 
will continue to grow as the Open Source project it has always been.


Regards,
Henrik