Installing xymon/apache as a non-root user 🔗 link

My company changed their policy to not give out root user access on their virtual environments.  I need to install both apache, xymon and all related packages on the virtual environment running RedHat.  The question is has anyone successfully installed xymon and apache as a non-root user that can share instructions of how to do that.  I usually installed xymon and apache with root either manually compiling or using rpm but never as non-root.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Installing Xymon as a non-root user should be fine.  It only needs root to set permissions then it runs as a normal user.  The problem with Apache is it can't run on port 80 without root access.

From: Xymon [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of LOZOVSKY, DANIEL L
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 1:12 PM
To: xymon at xymon.com
Subject: [Xymon] Installing xymon/apache as a non-root user

My company changed their policy to not give out root user access on their virtual environments.  I need to install both apache, xymon and all related packages on the virtual environment running RedHat.  The question is has anyone successfully installed xymon and apache as a non-root user that can share instructions of how to do that.  I usually installed xymon and apache with root either manually compiling or using rpm but never as non-root.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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On Thu, Feb 5, 2015, at 12:12, LOZOVSKY, DANIEL L wrote:

FreeBSD runs it as non-root out of the box, so it's possible. I believe
the manual install script asks you which UID/GID you want it to run
under so you can start there.

Fake edit: actually, you made me verify this and I realized that there
was an issue with the rc script for the xymon-client and it was not
completely running as non-root. I am now correcting this, but it does
not need root to operate.

However, if you don't run the client as root on FreeBSD and you have set
security.bsd.see_other_uids=1 the Xymon client won't be able to see any
processes except the ones owned by the xymon user. This behavior is not
new or changing; the "ps" command was previously always run as the
"xymon" user. It's just useful for any FreeBSD users reading this post
to be aware of.

Thank you everyone for your help.  Actually, I did not anticipate this quick response.  This xymon community is great.  I keep learning new things just by reading everyone's email.  It is great to be part of this community.  I have been pushing AT&T to utilize xymon instead of nagios.  I have been using BB open source version for almost 10 years and it really saved us at Supply Chain.  Of course, I had to make a lot of modifications to it.  Xymon is the next logical step to help make things much better.

Sent from my iPhone

On Fri, February 6, 2015 5:20 pm, LOZOVSKY, DANIEL L wrote:

That's wonderful to hear! We aim to please :)


At ServiceNow, we performed a migration from Icinga over to Xymon as our
primary internal monitoring system framework, so the Nagios->Xymon switch
is definitely doable.


One of the things I think you'll find most helpful is the ease by which
Xymon messages can be crafted. Since conceptually, everything in xymon is
a "passive test" (from xymond's perspective, xymonnet is simply another
test-result submitter), this makes it very easy to take tests fired off
locally (or via NRPE) and wrap them in small xymon shell wrapper bits (see
https://www.xymon.com/help/xymon-tips.html#scripts) to get them working
quickly.

Later on, you can go back and enrich the data sources beyond the typical
everything-on-one-line format to provide a more "Xymon-y" feel, but that
can ultimately be handled at your leisure...


Our primary hardware monitors are still essentially this; a Xymon
enrichment script wrapped around the check_openmanage Nagios check
(http://folk.uio.no/trondham/software/check_openmanage.html) running via
'xymonlaunch' on each host -- simply because there wasn't a need to
replace the evaluation logic we'd already been using.


Welcome to the list!

-jc

<snip>

Ooh, the check_openmanage software looks like it is being maintained
(whereas the xymon Dell OpenManage add-ons seem to have issues judging by
the mailing list). Are you able to share your 'Xymon enrichment script' for
it please?

Thanks and kind regards, 

SebA