On Friday 08 December 2006 00:01, Trent Melcher wrote:
Has anyone thought about or implemented a configuration database backend
for hobbit, primarily a database replacement for the hobbit-clients.cfg
and hobbit-alerts.cfg to start....
I have been thinking about it ... but I think Henrik's concern is not to add a dependency on another tool to the monitoring system.
There are however ways of getting around this. For example, it may be possible to have a task that builds the configuration files from a database. You can then potentially have both advantages.
these are a couple that I would like to buils a webfront to and be able to give limited access to users so
they could modify thresholds and alerting capabilities when needed.
For me the big reason isn't to ease configuration, but rather to leverage existing configuration information we have on our hosts. Our linux machines are deployed automatically based on configuration information in our config database, and includes IP addresses, function, hardware, site information etc, sufficient to deploy the machine ready for production in 10 minutes. Then, monitoring has to be added ....
I did this about 4 years back for Big Brother using Informix, I was
able to setup thresholds and a replacement for the bb-host file inside a
couple tables in a database. However back then Big Brother was mostly
shell scripts and flat files for all its configuration. So adding hooks
into it for talking to a databse was easy. With hobbit its all compiled
code and Im not sure where to start, plus I don't have access to an
Informix database or the API's for it anymore so Im looking at mysql and
its api's for writing code in C.
This approach would probably mean that Hobbit is dependant on one of those flaky things it is supposed to monitor, or in the case of a power outage, one of those things that might not start up ...
I guess Im looking to see if anyone has started some development in this
area?
I think there are potential advantages, but IMHO:
-a means for providing a standard way of configuring external checks should be done first
-Henrik needs to agree with the architecture
Since we already have a nice web interface to our configuration system (built with perl Catalyst) with authentication (against our LDAP server that everything authenticates against), session management, authorisation etc. already handled, I wouldn't really want to put user authentication in the same place.
Regards,
Buchan
--
Buchan Milne
ISP Systems Specialist - Monitoring/Authentication Team Leader
B.Eng,RHCE(803004789010797),LPIC-2(LPI000074592)