[Xymon] Quirky behavior

[Jeremy Laidman]

On 28 October 2014 08:45, Gregory J. DeCecco <turranx at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Is this the expected behavior?


Yes - if you know what to expect!  ;-)

One of the major performance improvements that Xymon has over its
predecessor BigBrother, is that it keeps state in memory, and doesn't have
to re-read its configuration files every 5 minutes.  In some cases, this
means that changes are not visible immediately, and require either a bit of
time to pass, or an action to take place.  This is the case for many
configuration files used by Xymon.

  I can see how this behavior would get in the way of architecting and
> rapid testing of a client-local.cfg file with multiple OSType, HostClass,
> and Hostname entries.


The contents of the file client-local.cfg is held in memory by xymond, and
is not updated unless xymond detects a change.  The xymond process can be
given a HUP signal to tell it to re-check all of its configuration files
for changes, and reload details as required.

You might find this sequence useful:

On the Xymon server:

1. Create a new entry for server01 in hosts.cfg

2. Send xymond a HUP signal:

  sudo -u xymon pkill -HUP xymond$

3. Run: xymon 127.0.0.1 "hostinfo host=server01 fields=XMH_CLASS,XMH_OS"

This shows the in-memory values for class and OS that xymond uses.  As
there has never been a client message, the values will be empty.

4. Run:
  a) xymon 127.0.0.1 "client server01.bogos bogos"
  b) xymon 127.0.0.1 "hostinfo host=server01 fields=XMH_CLASS,XMH_OS"

This will show "bogos|bogos".  Note that the "client" message gets nothing
from client-local.cfg.

5. Run:
  a) xymon 127.0.0.1 "client server01.win128 win128"
  b) xymon 127.0.0.1 "hostinfo host=server01 fields=XMH_CLASS,XMH_OS"

This will show "bogos|win128".  Also, no output from client-local.cfg, but
if there were an entry for [bogos] or [win128] it would have shown
something, with preference given to [bogos].

6. Run:
  a) touch hosts.cfg
  b) sudo -u xymon pkill -HUP xymond$
  c) xymon 127.0.0.1 "hostinfo host=server01 fields=XMH_CLASS,XMH_OS"

This will show "|" - that is, no values.

7. Run:
  a) xymon 127.0.0.1 "client server01.win16 win16"
  b) xymon 127.0.0.1 "hostinfo host=server01 fields=XMH_CLASS,XMH_OS"

This will show "win16|win16".

8. Run:
  a) xymon 127.0.0.1 "client server01.aix bogos"

This should give the [aix] section of client-local.cfg.

HTH

J
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