[Xymon] Hand editing config files

[Scot Kreienkamp]

I'm OK with text files, but a syntax checker for each config file sure would be nice.  I like the text files for the flexibility they allow.

Scot Kreienkamp
Senior Systems Engineer
skreien at la-z-boy.com

-----Original Message-----
From: xymon-bounces at xymon.com [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Henrik Størner
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2012 5:04 PM
To: Xymon mailinglist
Subject: [Xymon] Hand editing config files

Hi,

in another mail thread, another monitoring tool (Zenoss) was mentioned
which had the advantage of "no hand editing of config files".

Text based config files have their ups and downs - they are infinitely
flexible and can adapt to all sorts of weird ways of defining your
setup, but it is also easier to "get it wrong" and put something in
there which doesn't work. Even happens to me occasionally.

It's the age-old debate over whether something is "powerful" or "dangerous".

I am currently working on the next Xymon version (except I've been
swamped with for-pay work the past couple of months ... and a hefty
round of lay-offs in other departments than mine). This involves a
complete rewrite of the network testing tool, and for this rewrite I've
started using an SQLite database for storing some intermediate data used
by the network tester, instead of keeping it in a bunch of temporary
text-files.

And it has made me consider the idea of using a database for storing at
least some of the configuration - first of all the hosts.cfg
configuration of hosts, IP-adresses and network tests. This would make
some things simpler, others a bit more complex - "xymongrep", for
instance - but would also make it a lot easier to provide a GUI for
managing what hosts are being monitored.

This is not going to happen anytime soon, but since the subject was up
in the air - what do you think about it ? Is it a major problem that
Xymon has all configuration in text files ? How many of you
auto-generate the Xymon config by extracting the information from a
database already ?

Just looking for some feedback...


Regards,
Henrik
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