[Xymon] web configuration of xymon

[John Thurston]

On 3/27/2015 8:02 AM, Tracy Di Marco White wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We've been adding a lot of servers and services to our xymon monitoring
> deployment, and it's become somewhat more complex to manage changes to
> monitored hosts/services, as well as what's critical when, and what
> alerts are needed when. I'd like to deploy a web interface, with access
> controls of course, where people can change what systems are monitored,
> and what services on those systems are monitored, as well as what alerts
> they get when. Because there is so much flexibility in xymon, this can
> get fairly complex, and I want to add an error checking web interface to
> people's ability to change these settings.
>
> Does anyone already have something like this?

I think you may be looking for "MAGMA" which was a work in progress by 
Squidworks back in 2012.
http://lists.xymon.com/pipermail/xymon/2012-October/035876.html

> MAGMA is an add-on web GUI for managing Host, Groups and Alarms on a XYmon 4.3 or newer system.

> How does it work?
> ---------------------------
> It stores all alarm and host/group configs in the SQL database and rewrites the Host.cfg, Analysis.cfg and
> Alarms.cfg files causing the XYmon system to update its tests and pages based on the changes in these
> files. It will overwrite the files each time a host is added or edited making the process of updating
> automatic. To get the full benefit of MAGMA you should place all hosts in "central" mode,  although this is
> not required, without it your management is somewhat restrictive (external test management only). In
> Central mode you get full management features for all tests.

The site was live a couple of months ago, but I don't get anything from 
it now. I don't know if that is because the site is down, or because my 
workplace is blocking it. You could check the Wayback Machine at 
www.archive.org, but I can't because my workplace blocks that. You could 
also check the cached content in google, but I can't because my 
workplace also blocks that.

I looked briefly at MAGMA but pulled the plug on it in short order. It 
seemed silly to me to take an application with a lot of config files of 
varying complexity, and front it with another application (with its own 
authentication and authorization) reliant on PHP and mySQL. It was 
increasing the complexity and difficulty of support and recovery, while 
not really meeting a business need of ours.

In our installation, we have 1,223 hosts which are subject to only 
'ping' tests. These hosts are managed by scripts fed from our DNS, and 
require no day-to-day intervention from humans. (The last time a human 
touched those files was in April, 2013.)

We have about 650 hosts defined with clients. The hosts.cfg is handled 
day-to-day by by four admins by means of a script which implements 
simple file-semaphore locking and date-stamp versions. It is simple, and 
meets our current needs. If we outgrow this, we will probably go to 
nested .cfg files with 'include' statements. Doing that would let us 
limit the potential damage from a bad edit without having to deploy more 
complex admin tools.

The management of alerts.cfg is really handled by a single person. The 
rules and options available have turned out to be too complex to 
delegate. An application or system owner will come to me and I'll help 
nail down what their business needs are and determine if they are 
providing Xymon enough information that an alert can be written to meet 
that need.

Our clients are all handled in "local mode". We do not support "central 
mode". It is the responsibility of the client-node admins to configure 
their client software to meet their business needs. The Xymon admins to 
not have privileges to configure or run code on most of the hosts 
reporting to Xymon.

-- 
    Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston    907-465-8591
John.Thurston at alaska.gov
Enterprise Technology Services
Department of Administration
State of Alaska