Hobbit vs Nagios
list Allan Spencer
Hey guys, As much as I dont want to move away from Hobbit/Big Brother I have been asked to compare Hobbit to Nagios. I would imagine quite a number of people on this list have experienced many of the offerings out theere before changing to hobbit or using a combination of products. I've done a quick google and there is a bit of stuff out there but obviously the more the merrier. So yeah pros cons from all aspects would be quite welcome and perhaps the results could be stuck up on the Wiki somewhere Cheers Allan
list T.J. Yang
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<snip>
As much as I dont want to move away from Hobbit/Big Brother I have been asked to compare Hobbit to Nagios. I would imagine quite a number of people on this list have experienced many of the offerings out theere before changing to hobbit or using a combination of products. I've done a quick google and there is a bit of stuff out there but obviously the more the merrier. So yeah pros cons from all aspects would be quite welcome and perhaps the results could be stuck up on the Wiki somewhere
if someone are willing to contribute the comparison efforts. How about here ? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#System_Monitoring_Software_Comparison
list Matthew Davis
I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.
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On 5/22/06, T.J. Yang <user-8e841282cda5@xymon.invalid> wrote:<snip>As much as I dont want to move away from Hobbit/Big Brother I have been asked to compare Hobbit to Nagios. I would imagine quite a number of people on this list have experienced many of the offerings out theere before changing to hobbit or using a combination of products. I've done a quick google and there is a bit of stuff out there but obviously the more the merrier. So yeah pros cons from all aspects would be quite welcome and perhaps the results could be stuck up on the Wiki somewhereif someone are willing to contribute the comparison efforts. How about here ? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#System_Monitoring_Software_Comparison
--
Matthew Davis http://familycampground.org/matthew/
list Dan Vande More
IIRC, nagios doesn't support string matching like looking for 250 on an smtp connection, or a 200/301 on an http connection without a special plugin - it merely checks to see if the port responds. This is one of hobbit's greatest strengths and one of the reasons I chose it. Also, I believe, though it's just an opinion, that hobbit/bb's client configuration is much more "standardized" (for lack of better term). It's far more likely that I can take a hobbit client and move it to an entirely different system and it would work with very little configuration. The same did not seem to hold true for nagios. In fact, I remember downloading nagios extensions from the share site and "porting" them to my servers. IOW, the bb client knew where grep was, where top was, etc. Nagios does not. Nagios also cannot send you more than the first line of text on a notifcation. A huge problem for me. When I'm out and I get a page, I want to see the whole message so I can decide whether to up the priority and get to a computer, or ignore it because it was a some transient error. Built in configurability is important. The fact that hobbit can almost instantly and natively work with https,pop3s, imaps, ldapssl is great. The flexibility in dns libraries is nice for troubleshooting. And on, and on... The nagios page always seemed heavy and was uncomfortably large to download from a pda while out. It was also impossible to navigate. While hobbit isn't made to work with pdas with little resolution, it actually works really well. I'm not going to argue that either is faster, I do know that hobbit is very, very fast and I know this as well as security are among the top priorities for Henrik and since they match my priorities well, it was no contest. Henrik also seems to take the "Do it right" approach which I like too. Instead of kludging code together to put in some haphazard feature, he actually seems to take a deep breath and think about things before implementing them. This means once something is in hobbit you know it's been pretty well thought through and will probably remain relatively stable and will not be a drag on the code later. Additionally, I like how patches/bugs can be submitted and Henrik fixes them usually almost immediately. While it might seem to not be a big deal because it's just a simple thing he missed, it adds an enormous amount of credence to the project. Finally, not to say nagios code is not cleanly, but hobbit's code is very easy to read, understand and work on from my point of view. Dan
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On 5/22/06, T.J. Yang <user-8e841282cda5@xymon.invalid> wrote:<snip>As much as I dont want to move away from Hobbit/Big Brother I have been asked to compare Hobbit to Nagios. I would imagine quite a number of people on this list have experienced many of the offerings out theere before changing to hobbit or using a combination of products. I've done a quick google and there is a bit of stuff out there but obviously the more the merrier. So yeah pros cons from all aspects would be quite welcome and perhaps the results could be stuck up on the Wiki somewhereif someone are willing to contribute the comparison efforts. How about here ? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#System_Monitoring_Software_Comparison
list Dan Vande More
I should also mention that the basic graphing is a tremendous time saver. The fact that almost all of it works out of the box and for basic things like ping, disk space, etc saves a huge headache of having to jump back and forth between mrtg/cacti and hobbit. While I believe in the separaton of apps for most areas, this is one I'm reluctanct to separate readily. Cacti does my real graphing, like bandwidth/temperature and stuff, but hobbit gives me some meat right there - no search, no wandering, no switching tabs, just concomitant graphs and statuses.
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On 5/22/06, Dan Vande More <user-f3c4c62d9d50@xymon.invalid> wrote:IIRC, nagios doesn't support string matching like looking for 250 on an smtp connection, or a 200/301 on an http connection without a special plugin - it merely checks to see if the port responds. This is one of hobbit's greatest strengths and one of the reasons I chose it. Also, I believe, though it's just an opinion, that hobbit/bb's client configuration is much more "standardized" (for lack of better term). It's far more likely that I can take a hobbit client and move it to an entirely different system and it would work with very little configuration. The same did not seem to hold true for nagios. In fact, I remember downloading nagios extensions from the share site and "porting" them to my servers. IOW, the bb client knew where grep was, where top was, etc. Nagios does not. Nagios also cannot send you more than the first line of text on a notifcation. A huge problem for me. When I'm out and I get a page, I want to see the whole message so I can decide whether to up the priority and get to a computer, or ignore it because it was a some transient error. Built in configurability is important. The fact that hobbit can almost instantly and natively work with https,pop3s, imaps, ldapssl is great. The flexibility in dns libraries is nice for troubleshooting. And on, and on... The nagios page always seemed heavy and was uncomfortably large to download from a pda while out. It was also impossible to navigate. While hobbit isn't made to work with pdas with little resolution, it actually works really well. I'm not going to argue that either is faster, I do know that hobbit is very, very fast and I know this as well as security are among the top priorities for Henrik and since they match my priorities well, it was no contest. Henrik also seems to take the "Do it right" approach which I like too. Instead of kludging code together to put in some haphazard feature, he actually seems to take a deep breath and think about things before implementing them. This means once something is in hobbit you know it's been pretty well thought through and will probably remain relatively stable and will not be a drag on the code later. Additionally, I like how patches/bugs can be submitted and Henrik fixes them usually almost immediately. While it might seem to not be a big deal because it's just a simple thing he missed, it adds an enormous amount of credence to the project. Finally, not to say nagios code is not cleanly, but hobbit's code is very easy to read, understand and work on from my point of view. Dan On 5/22/06, T.J. Yang <user-8e841282cda5@xymon.invalid> wrote:<snip>As much as I dont want to move away from Hobbit/Big Brother I have been asked to compare Hobbit to Nagios. I would imagine quite a number of people on this list have experienced many of the offerings out theere before changing to hobbit or using a combination of products. I've done a quick google and there is a bit of stuff out there but obviously the more the merrier. So yeah pros cons from all aspects would be quite welcome and perhaps the results could be stuck up on the Wiki somewhereif someone are willing to contribute the comparison efforts. How about here ? http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#System_Monitoring_Software_Comparison
list Henrik Størner
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On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400, Matthew Davis wrote:
I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.
I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios. Regards, Henrik
list Greg L Hubbard
Henrik: I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts? GLH
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-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:33 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios
On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400, Matthew Davis wrote:I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.
I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios. Regards, Henrik
list Charles Jones
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Hubbard, Greg L wrote:
Henrik: I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client.
You should be able to statically compile the client on another machine that is the same OS, and then copy it to the target machine. Perhaps Henrik could add a --static option to the configure so that you wouldn't have to hack the Makefile to do it..
list Greg L Hubbard
The problem is that these machines are the only ones of their type. Or I would do what you suggest... GLH
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From: Charles Jones [mailto:user-e86b4aeade4e@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:05 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios
Hubbard, Greg L wrote:
Henrik:
I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that
does not have to
be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would
sure help me out
if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I
could use on
the one or two systems where I cannot install all the
junk needed to
compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl
distributions that just
drop in are usually available... I know there would be
a performance
hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run
client than no
client.
You should be able to statically compile the client on another
machine that is the same OS, and then copy it to the target machine.
Perhaps Henrik could add a --static option to the configure so that you
wouldn't have to hack the Makefile to do it..
list Larry Barber
The only binary you _really_ need is bb and I think I saw a Perl version of the BigBrother bb program on deadcat. If you were to install that you could use cron (assuming these are Unix-like machines) to run the hobbitclient.shscript every 5 minutes. Thanks, Larry Barber
▸
On 6/21/06, Hubbard, Greg L <user-d970b5e56ec9@xymon.invalid> wrote:Henrik: I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts? GLH -----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:33 AM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400, Matthew Davis wrote:I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios. Regards, Henrik
list Charles Jones
That's a good idea, I forgot about that Perl version of bb. Hmm I wonder if there is anything special that the bb binary does to send it's data, such that you could just use "netcat" and pipe the client data to it. Only problem then is his server might not have netcat either :) -Charles
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Larry Barber wrote:The only binary you _really_ need is bb and I think I saw a Perl version of the BigBrother bb program on deadcat. If you were to install that you could use cron (assuming these are Unix-like
machines) to run the hobbitclient.sh script every 5 minutes.
▸
Thanks, Larry Barber On 6/21/06, *Hubbard, Greg L* <user-d970b5e56ec9@xymon.invalid <mailto:user-d970b5e56ec9@xymon.invalid> > wrote: Henrik: I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts? GLH -----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid <mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid>] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:33 AM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid <mailto:user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid> Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400, Matthew Davis wrote:I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios.
list Joe Moore
The "mconnect" command might also work. It's been around on solaris since v2.4... it's delivered with Sendmail apparently. echo "status host.service green `date` all ok" | mconnect $BBHOST 1984 --Joe
▸
From: Charles Jones [mailto:user-e86b4aeade4e@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:57 PM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios
That's a good idea, I forgot about that Perl version of bb. Hmm
I wonder if there is anything special that the bb binary does to send
it's data, such that you could just use "netcat" and pipe the client
data to it. Only problem then is his server might not have netcat either
:)
▸
-Charles
Larry Barber wrote:
The only binary you _really_ need is bb and I think I
saw a Perl version of the BigBrother bb program on deadcat. If you were
to install that you could use cron (assuming these are Unix-like
machines) to run the hobbitclient.sh script every 5 minutes.
Thanks,
Larry Barber
On 6/21/06, Hubbard, Greg L <user-d970b5e56ec9@xymon.invalid >
wrote:
Henrik:
I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional
client that does not have to
be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it
would sure help me out
if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell"
client that I could use on
the one or two systems where I cannot install
all the junk needed to
compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl
distributions that just
drop in are usually available... I know there
would be a performance
hit, but I would rather have a more
expensive-to-run client than no
client.
Thoughts?
GLH
-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:33 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios
On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400,
Matthew Davis wrote:I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.
I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios.
list Eric E *hs Schwimmer
Here's a perl module that emulates the bb binary: http://www.nerdvana.org/eric/bbtools/bbmsg.pm -Eric
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-----Original Message----- From: Charles Jones [mailto:user-e86b4aeade4e@xymon.invalid] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:57 PM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios That's a good idea, I forgot about that Perl version of bb. Hmm I wonder if there is anything special that the bb binary does to send it's data, such that you could just use "netcat" and pipe the client data to it. Only problem then is his server might not have netcat either :) -Charles Larry Barber wrote: The only binary you _really_ need is bb and I think I saw a Perl version of the BigBrother bb program on deadcat. If you were to install that you could use cron (assuming these are Unix-like machines) to run the hobbitclient.sh script every 5 minutes. Thanks, Larry Barber On 6/21/06, Hubbard, Greg L <user-d970b5e56ec9@xymon.invalid > wrote: Henrik: I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts? GLH -----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 9:33 AM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid <mailto:user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid> Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios On Mon, May 22, 2006 at 09:47:47PM -0400, Matthew Davis wrote:I tried out nagios and one huge winning factor for Hobbit was simplicity. I put quite a bit of time into getting nagios off the > ground with little luck. And in the same amount of time, I was able to get nearly all functionality I required out of a monitoring program.I had a funny experience last week. There was a Linux Users group meeting here in Copenhagen, where the subject was "Setting up Nagios". Since I'm always interested to see what the competitors look like, I attended. The guy who told about Nagios knew that I am behind Hobbit, as did a couple of the people in the audience. So when the talk about Nagios was over and there was some spare time left, they asked me if I could give a quick overview of Hobbit. Which I did, thanks to a wireless Internet connection they managed to setup quickly. After about an hour, someone in the audience asked the Nagios guy "after hearing about Nagios and Hobbit tonight, why didn't you just install Hobbit?" I think that tells a lot about how easy it is to setup Hobbit compared to Nagios.
list Henrik Størner
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On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 11:18:17AM -0500, Hubbard, Greg L wrote:
I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts?
The only tools you need for building a Hobbit client are a C compiler and GNU make. Period. Combined with the fact that you can compile the client on one system, wrap it up in a tar-file and install it on all of the other systems, I really don't think this is a big issue. I've already had a couple of people offering their pre-built clients for various platforms for download, so I expect that once the 4.2 release is out, there will quickly be ready-to-run binaries available for download. I really don't want to have two separate implementations of the same utility. Especially not one that I will not be able to maintain - I am about as good at Perl programming as the proverbial monkey. Regards, Henrik
list Greg L Hubbard
Well, that's that. My problem is that I have a few systems that I want to monitor that are either old, or singletons, or both. In my particular case it is and elderly one-of-a-kind system. I understand your reluctance to maintain two source trees. If you can write C, you can write Perl, and probably run rings around most Perl hackers. Thanks anyway!
▸
GLH
-----Original Message-----
From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 4:12 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios
On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 11:18:17AM -0500, Hubbard, Greg L wrote:I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help me
out if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could use
on the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts?
The only tools you need for building a Hobbit client are a C compiler and GNU make. Period. Combined with the fact that you can compile the client on one system, wrap it up in a tar-file and install it on all of the other systems, I really don't think this is a big issue. I've already had a couple of people offering their pre-built clients for various platforms for download, so I expect that once the 4.2 release is out, there will quickly be ready-to-run binaries available for download. I really don't want to have two separate implementations of the same utility. Especially not one that I will not be able to maintain - I am about as good at Perl programming as the proverbial monkey. Regards, Henrik
list John Glowacki
Since you are talking just a few systems. You could try this agentless idea that was mentioned way back. http://www.hswn.dk/hobbiton/2006/01/msg00045.html I just tried it on a PPC embedded linux device which has limited command functionality. The basics are working for cpu, disk, ports and procs. Procs I had to echo a fake header, but it is listing the processes and checking what should be running. And now memory. I had to re-format the output with sed. 7 of the 8 Graphs seem to work properly. I got it to do more then I expected. If I needed msgs, I probably could have found a way. John
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Hubbard, Greg L wrote:Well, that's that. My problem is that I have a few systems that I want to monitor that are either old, or singletons, or both. In my particular case it is and elderly one-of-a-kind system. I understand your reluctance to maintain two source trees. If you can write C, you can write Perl, and probably run rings around most Perl hackers. Thanks anyway! GLH -----Original Message----- From: Henrik Stoerner [mailto:user-ce4a2c883f75@xymon.invalid] Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 4:12 AM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 11:18:17AM -0500, Hubbard, Greg L wrote:I heard a rumor that Nagios has an optional client that does not have to be compiled. Don't know if this is true, but it would sure help meout if there was a "Perl-only" or "Perl+shell" client that I could useon the one or two systems where I cannot install all the junk needed to compile a Hobbit client binary. Binary Perl distributions that just drop in are usually available... I know there would be a performance hit, but I would rather have a more expensive-to-run client than no client. Thoughts?The only tools you need for building a Hobbit client are a C compiler and GNU make. Period. Combined with the fact that you can compile the client on one system, wrap it up in a tar-file and install it on all of the other systems, I really don't think this is a big issue. I've already had a couple of people offering their pre-built clients for various platforms for download, so I expect that once the 4.2 release is out, there will quickly be ready-to-run binaries available for download. I really don't want to have two separate implementations of the same utility. Especially not one that I will not be able to maintain - I am about as good at Perl programming as the proverbial monkey. Regards, Henrik
list Buchan Milne
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On Monday 26 June 2006 17:33, Hubbard, Greg L wrote:
Well, that's that. My problem is that I have a few systems that I want to monitor that are either old, or singletons, or both. In my particular case it is and elderly one-of-a-kind system.
List the platform, and you may find someone with one who can provide you with binaries ... -- Buchan Milne ISP Systems Specialist B.Eng,RHCE(803004789010797),LPIC-2(LPI000074592)
list Robert P McGraw
I am running hobbit 4.1.2p1. I want to upgrade to the latest stable version. I found versions of hobbit on www.hswn.dk and sourceforge. Where do I get the latest stable version of hobbit? Are there patches that have to be added to this version or is there a version with the patches already? What is the latest version? I have been using bb then hobbit for many years and have found it excellent. There is another department that is looking into nagios monitoring software. They are willing to monitor other departments hosts if we want. Looking at their web page I see a lot of eye candy reports and they look cluttered but that is just looking at the screen shots. I personally like hobbit's simple interface. Has anyone else looked at nagios and why did you prefer hobbit over nagios? Just wondering. Robert Robert P. McGraw, Jr. Manager, Computer System EMAIL: user-33cf07af04dd@xymon.invalid Purdue University ROOM: MATH-807 Department of Mathematics PHONE: (XXX) XXX-XXXX XXX N. University Street West Lafayette, IN XXXXX-XXXX
list Ralph Mitchell
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On Feb 4, 2008 11:50 AM, McGraw, Robert P <user-33cf07af04dd@xymon.invalid> wrote:
I am running hobbit 4.1.2p1. I want to upgrade to the latest stable version. I found versions of hobbit on www.hswn.dk and sourceforge. Where do I get the latest stable version of hobbit? Are there patches that have to be added to this version or is there a version with the patches already? What is the latest version?
The latest stable version is 4.2.0, available here: http://www.hswn.dk/hobbitsw/ See also the patches directory there and fetch the all-in-one patch. Ralph Mitchell
list Martin Flemming
Hi !
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On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, McGraw, Robert P wrote:
I am running hobbit 4.1.2p1. I want to upgrade to the latest stable version. I found versions of hobbit on www.hswn.dk and sourceforge. Where do I get the latest stable version of hobbit?
http://www.hswn.dk/hobbitsw/hobbit-4.2.0/
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Are there patches that have to be added to this version or is there a version with the patches already?
http://www.hswn.dk/hobbitsw/patches/
What is the latest version?
Snapshot is not the last version, but the last snapshot .. http://www.hswn.dk/beta/
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I have been using bb then hobbit for many years and have found it excellent. There is another department that is looking into nagios monitoring software. They are willing to monitor other departments hosts if we want. Looking at their web page I see a lot of eye candy reports and they look cluttered but that is just looking at the screen shots. I personally like hobbit's simple interface. Has anyone else looked at nagios and why did you prefer hobbit over nagios?
e.g - a nice report of Tracy Di Marco White why using Hobbit http://gendalia.public.iastate.edu/Hobbit.txt - nice thread http://www.hswn.dk/hobbiton/2006/05/msg00359.html - wiki http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/System_Monitoring_with_Hobbit/User_Guide#Why_use_hobbit_.3F
Just wondering.
Not really .. ?
cheers,
Martin
list Robert P McGraw
Maybe another pertinent question might be is there new stable version that will be coming out any time soon. I would rather not install 4.2.0 and then find that next week 4.3.0 will be out. Thanks for your comments. Robert
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From: Ralph Mitchell [mailto:user-00a5e44c48c0@xymon.invalid] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 1:05 PM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Subject: Re: [hobbit] The latest version of hobbit. On Feb 4, 2008 11:50 AM, McGraw, Robert P <user-33cf07af04dd@xymon.invalid> wrote: I am running hobbit 4.1.2p1. I want to upgrade to the latest stable version. I found versions of hobbit on www.hswn.dk and sourceforge. Where do I get the latest stable version of hobbit? Are there patches that have to be added to this version or is there a version with the patches already? What is the latest version? The latest stable version is 4.2.0, available here: http://www.hswn.dk/hobbitsw/ See also the patches directory there and fetch the all-in-one patch. Ralph Mitchell
list Rob MacGregor
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On Feb 4, 2008 7:52 PM, McGraw, Robert P <user-33cf07af04dd@xymon.invalid> wrote:
Maybe another pertinent question might be is there new stable version that will be coming out any time soon. I would rather not install 4.2.0 and then find that next week 4.3.0 will be out.
This comes up regularly on this (and many other) list(s). I suggest
you have a quick search of the archive for the multiple threads from
the last few months.
Hint, with a lot of/most OSS the new stable version comes out when
it's ready, not on a schedule :)
--
Please keep list traffic on the list.
Rob MacGregor
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he
doesn't become a monster. Friedrich Nietzsche
list Henrik Størner
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On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:50:32PM -0500, McGraw, Robert P wrote:
I am running hobbit 4.1.2p1. I want to upgrade to the latest stable version. I found versions of hobbit on www.hswn.dk and sourceforge.
Sourceforge is the official repository for stable versions. www.hswn.dk is my personal website - it has the latest stable release, some post-release patches, and the current development snapshot.
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Where do I get the latest stable version of hobbit? Are there patches that have to be added to this version or is there a version with the patches already? What is the latest version?
Recommended patches - the "all-in-one" patch - are available from http://www.hswn.dk/hobbitsw/patches/ Regards, Henrik
list Axel Beckert
Hi,
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On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:50:32PM -0500, McGraw, Robert P wrote:Has anyone else looked at nagios and why did you prefer hobbit over nagios?
I've used Nagios as well as Big Brother (BB) on the job. Wasn't very
happy with either. Both have about the same amount of advantages and
disadvantages. Hobbit has less disadvantages than BB and there are
only a few Nagios features I would like to have which neither BB nor
Hobbit have, so I stick with Hobbit and we're currently replacing our
BB on the job with hobbit. For our Linux User Group I will replace a
Nagios with Hobbit soon.
So here's my short comparision chart:
What I like with Nagios which is neither in BB nor Hobbit
+ Service Dependencies (if MySQL is down, the Website is broken, too,
so report MySQL as the source of the problem)
+ Host Dependencies (if the router is down, it's clear that all hosts
behind must be down, too).
+ Event Hooks (good for connecting IRC Bots :-)
What I like with Hobbit which isn't in Nagios
+ Pushing the reports by default. This enables two further advantages:
+ Having a "no reports recently" state.
+ Possibility to mark hosts as "dialup", so you can monitor hosts
with changing IPs or not permanently running hosts (desktops,
workstations). This is the killer feature for me, on the job as
well as at home.
+ 2-dimensional (host x service) tables, which give IMHO a better
overview (YMMV)
+ More flexible in generating own pages for groups of machines.
+ Configuration easier to overview, needs less lines of code per
host. (YMMV)
(If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though
available, please correct me. :-)
P.S.: I also had a short look at Pandora FMS (http://pandora.sf.net/),
but it seemed to be overkill for my purposes.
Kind regards, Axel Beckert
--
Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> support: +41 44 633 2668
IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189
Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +XX XX XXX XXXX
CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
list Darin D [eit] Dugan
Service dependencies -- see 'depends' in Hobbit bb-host man page. Host dependencies -- see 'route' in Hobbit bb-host man page. -----Original Message----- From: Axel Beckert [mailto:user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid] Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 8:26 AM To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios (was: The latest version of hobbit.)
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<snip> What I like with Nagios which is neither in BB nor Hobbit + Service Dependencies (if MySQL is down, the Website is broken, too, so report MySQL as the source of the problem) + Host Dependencies (if the router is down, it's clear that all hosts behind must be down, too). + Event Hooks (good for connecting IRC Bots :-) <snip> (If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though available, please correct me. :-) P.S.: I also had a short look at Pandora FMS (http://pandora.sf.net/), but it seemed to be overkill for my purposes. Kind regards, Axel Beckert -- Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +XX XX XXX XXXX CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
list Axel Beckert
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On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 08:49:06AM -0600, Dugan, Darin D [EIT] wrote:
Service dependencies -- see 'depends' in Hobbit bb-host man page. Host dependencies -- see 'route' in Hobbit bb-host man page.
Hey, thanks. Seems if I still don't know all improvements of Hobbit over BB. :-)
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Kind regards, Axel Beckert -- Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +XX XX XXX XXXX CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
list Patrick Nixon
And I'm sure you can use external paging scripts to do the hooks, it's a workaround, but it'll work, assuming you can get the IRC bot to work on a script/text file.
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On Feb 5, 2008 9:58 AM, Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> wrote:On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 08:49:06AM -0600, Dugan, Darin D [EIT] wrote:Service dependencies -- see 'depends' in Hobbit bb-host man page. Host dependencies -- see 'route' in Hobbit bb-host man page.Hey, thanks. Seems if I still don't know all improvements of Hobbit over BB. :-) Kind regards, Axel Beckert -- Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +XX XX XXX XXXX CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
list Galen Johnson
I wrote an AIM "pager" for Big Brother that would probably work for Hobbit as well. It's over on deadcat. =G=
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-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Nixon [mailto:user-1f2406f832af@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 11:15 AM
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios (was: The latest version of hobbit.)
And I'm sure you can use external paging scripts to do the hooks, it's
a workaround, but it'll work, assuming you can get the IRC bot to work
on a script/text file.
On Feb 5, 2008 9:58 AM, Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> wrote:On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 08:49:06AM -0600, Dugan, Darin D [EIT] wrote:Service dependencies -- see 'depends' in Hobbit bb-host man page. Host dependencies -- see 'route' in Hobbit bb-host man page.Hey, thanks. Seems if I still don't know all improvements of Hobbit over BB. :-) Kind regards, Axel Beckert -- Axel Beckert <user-96d9963fe797@xymon.invalid> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +XX XX XXX XXXX CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/
list Charles Jones
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Axel Beckert wrote:
(If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though available, please correct me. :-)
For the record, I prefer Hobbit. In my experience, the #1 thing that Nagios folks rub in my face is "flap detection". I think Henrik is working on adding this to Hobbit :)
list Henrik Størner
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On Tue, Feb 05, 2008 at 11:04:57AM -0700, Charles Jones wrote:
Axel Beckert wrote:(If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though available, please correct me. :-)For the record, I prefer Hobbit. In my experience, the #1 thing that Nagios folks rub in my face is "flap detection". I think Henrik is working on adding this to Hobbit :)
It's in the snapshots. Not as elaborate as the Nagios stuff, but I think it is quite useful as-is. Regards, Henrik