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[feature request] Client-side connectivity check

4 messages in this thread

list Charles Goyard · Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:24:33 +0200 ·
Hi,

my company has an heavily firewalled network. A rule that says "host1 can
reach host2 on port 670" somehow vanish (ie human error), and your
service stops working. Most of the time, you'll be aware of it, because
you check at the service level, or the customers phones you. However,
for some applications, such as backups, you'll know some hours, or days
later.

So I come up with a suggestion: be able to check if a specific port is
reachable for the client standpoint. Socket connection can be done via
the bb utility. [picky servers like mysql would be handled differently].

This is kind of easy to do, but the important thing is to have it
standard into hobbit. 

Henrik, does this appeal to you ?

-- 
Charles Goyard - user-a6cdca7046e2@xymon.invalid - (+33) 1 45 38 01 31
Orange Business Services - online multimedia  // ingénierie
list Etienne Marganne · Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:35:31 +0200 ·
Hello all,

I agree with that idea, it can be useful to know if a specific port or a list of specific ports is reachable from a client side.

Regards.
quoted from Charles Goyard

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Goyard [mailto:user-a6cdca7046e2@xymon.invalid] 
Sent: mercredi 25 juillet 2007 11:25
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: [hobbit] [feature request] Client-side connectivity check

Hi,

my company has an heavily firewalled network. A rule that says "host1 can
reach host2 on port 670" somehow vanish (ie human error), and your
service stops working. Most of the time, you'll be aware of it, because
you check at the service level, or the customers phones you. However,
for some applications, such as backups, you'll know some hours, or days
later.

So I come up with a suggestion: be able to check if a specific port is
reachable for the client standpoint. Socket connection can be done via
the bb utility. [picky servers like mysql would be handled differently].

This is kind of easy to do, but the important thing is to have it
standard into hobbit. 

Henrik, does this appeal to you ?

-- 
Charles Goyard - user-a6cdca7046e2@xymon.invalid - (+33) 1 45 38 01 31
Orange Business Services - online multimedia  // ingénierie


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list Henrik Størner · Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:15:01 +0200 ·
quoted from Charles Goyard
On Wed, Jul 25, 2007 at 11:24:33AM +0200, Charles Goyard wrote:
my company has an heavily firewalled network. A rule that says "host1 can
reach host2 on port 670" somehow vanish (ie human error), and your
service stops working. Most of the time, you'll be aware of it, because
you check at the service level, or the customers phones you. However,
for some applications, such as backups, you'll know some hours, or days
later.

So I come up with a suggestion: be able to check if a specific port is
reachable for the client standpoint. Socket connection can be done via
the bb utility. [picky servers like mysql would be handled differently].
I have some cases like that in my production environment. What I've done
is to simply install the full Hobbit server on these nodes, and disable
all tasks except the client- and networktest-tasks.

If you setup the BBLOCATION setting on these nodes, you can even
configure them centrally in your normal bb-hosts file, and just scp or
rsync it everywhere.


Regards,
Henrik
list Charles Goyard · Thu, 26 Jul 2007 15:31:59 +0200 ·
Hi all,
quoted from Henrik Størner

Henrik Stoerner wrote :
Charles Goyard wrote:
So I come up with a suggestion: be able to check if a specific port is
reachable for the client standpoint. Socket connection can be done via
the bb utility. [picky servers like mysql would be handled differently].
I have some cases like that in my production environment. What I've done
is to simply install the full Hobbit server on these nodes, and disable
all tasks except the client- and networktest-tasks.
That could do the trick, but what I had in mind is a task installed on
almost every host.

We're working on a sample perl-based implementation. If it proves
useful, we'll be glad to port it to C and have it included into hobbit
as a standard status report.


Regards,
quoted from Etienne Marganne

-- 
Charles Goyard - user-a6cdca7046e2@xymon.invalid - (+33) 1 45 38 01 31
Orange Business Services - online multimedia  // ingénierie