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fping error code 4

7 messages in this thread

list Vernon Everett · Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:12:07 +0800 ·
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?

Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4
/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument

Error I see when xymonnet page goes red.
At the same time, all conn tests go white.
Happens briefly every few hours. No obvious pattern, but at least once a
day, sometimes twice.

This is a new installation of Xymon 4.3.10, on a relatively old Solaris 10
Sparc server.

Regards
Vernon

-- 
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton
list Japheth Cleaver · Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:17:25 -0800 ·
quoted from Vernon Everett
On 1/9/2013 10:12 PM, Vernon Everett wrote:
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?
Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4
/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument
DIAGNOSTICS
        Exit status is 0 if all the hosts are reachable, 1 if some hosts were unreachable, 2 if any IP addresses were not found, 3 for invalid command line arguments, and 4 for a system call failure.

Not much comes to mind except some sort of hidiously invalid hostname somehow making it in the xymon pipe through to fping, which fping is then trying to select on. Is your xymon config pretty static or are there are lot of changes happening to it all the time? Any other unusual Solaris behavior going on, or anything weird with the (local) fping compile?

Regards,

-jc
list Michael Beatty · Thu, 10 Jan 2013 08:51:08 -0500 ·
I have seen that happen to me when fping's permissions weren't set right, it can only be run by root.  I had to turn the sticky bit on, ie. rwsr-xr-x.

Michael Beatty
Sherwin-Williams
IT Analyst/Developer
user-4aea7c115850@xymon.invalid
XXX-XXX-XXXX
quoted from Japheth Cleaver

On 01/10/2013 02:17 AM, Japheth Cleaver wrote:
On 1/9/2013 10:12 PM, Vernon Everett wrote:
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?
Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4
/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument
DIAGNOSTICS
       Exit status is 0 if all the hosts are reachable, 1 if some hosts were unreachable, 2 if any IP addresses were not found, 3 for invalid command line arguments, and 4 for a system call failure.

Not much comes to mind except some sort of hidiously invalid hostname somehow making it in the xymon pipe through to fping, which fping is then trying to select on. Is your xymon config pretty static or are there are lot of changes happening to it all the time? Any other unusual Solaris behavior going on, or anything weird with the (local) fping compile?

Regards,

-jc

list Ryan Novosielski · Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:11:04 -0500 ·
Does a blank hostname do this at all I wonder?
quoted from Japheth Cleaver


----- Original Message -----
From: Japheth Cleaver [mailto:user-87556346d4af@xymon.invalid]
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2013 02:17 AM
To: xymon at xymon.com <xymon at xymon.com>
Subject: Re: [Xymon] fping error code 4

On 1/9/2013 10:12 PM, Vernon Everett wrote:
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?
Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4
/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument
DIAGNOSTICS
        Exit status is 0 if all the hosts are reachable, 1 if some hosts were unreachable, 2 if any IP addresses were not found, 3 for invalid command line arguments, and 4 for a system call failure.

Not much comes to mind except some sort of hidiously invalid hostname somehow making it in the xymon pipe through to fping, which fping is then trying to select on. Is your xymon config pretty static or are there are lot of changes happening to it all the time? Any other unusual Solaris behavior going on, or anything weird with the (local) fping compile?

Regards,

-jc
list Jeremy Laidman · Fri, 11 Jan 2013 11:16:10 +1100 ·
I think the key here is the "select".  To me, this suggests that the
select() system call (which is used to read data on STDIN from xymonnet) is
trying to get data from a closed socket, or a similar problem.  I wonder if
fping, which is run from xymonnet, is sometimes taking so long to run, and
eventually xymonlaunch is killing xymonnet.

By default, xymonlaunch (in tasks.cfg) kills xymonnet after 5 minutes, but
xymonnetagain is killed off after only 1 minute.  So if you have a lot of
hosts that are uncontactable, or have long ping times, then this might add
up to a minute.

To confirm this, check out the "xymonnet" dot on your Xymon server, and
look at the "TIME SPENT" table for ping test duration.

J
quoted from Vernon Everett


On 10 January 2013 17:12, Vernon Everett <user-b3f8dacb72c8@xymon.invalid> wrote:
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?

Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4

/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument

Error I see when xymonnet page goes red.
At the same time, all conn tests go white.
Happens briefly every few hours. No obvious pattern, but at least once a
day, sometimes twice.

This is a new installation of Xymon 4.3.10, on a relatively old Solaris 10
Sparc server.

Regards
Vernon

--
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton

list Henrik Størner · Fri, 11 Jan 2013 08:20:25 +0100 ·
On 10-01-2013 15:11, Novosielski, Ryan wrote:
Does a blank hostname do this at all I wonder?
No, Xymon performs DNS lookups on the hostnames and only feed IP's to fping.


Regards,
Henrik
list Vernon Everett · Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:27:40 +0800 ·
Hi all

"TIME SPENT" is showing the odd spike now and then, but the highest I have
seen is 9.8 seconds.
And these peaks do not coincide with the fping issues.

I did a little more research, and discovered 2 instances of fping.
#  /opt/csw/sbin/fping -v
/opt/csw/sbin/fping: Version 2.4b2_to $Date: 2002/01/16 00:33:42 $
/opt/csw/sbin/fping: comments to user-eaf9c6286157@xymon.invalid

# /usr/local/sbin/fping -v
/usr/local/sbin/fping: Version 3.0
/usr/local/sbin/fping: comments to user-359c54915310@xymon.invalid

/opt/csw/sbin/fping is the one I installed recently using OpenCSW's
pkgutil, but the Xymon config was pointing to /usr/local/sbin/fping
I have switched the FPING= definition in ~/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg to
point to the OpenCSW version.
Let's see if this improves matters.

Regards
Vernon
quoted from Jeremy Laidman


On 11 January 2013 08:16, Jeremy Laidman <user-71895fb2e44c@xymon.invalid> wrote:
I think the key here is the "select".  To me, this suggests that the
select() system call (which is used to read data on STDIN from xymonnet) is
trying to get data from a closed socket, or a similar problem.  I wonder if
fping, which is run from xymonnet, is sometimes taking so long to run, and
eventually xymonlaunch is killing xymonnet.

By default, xymonlaunch (in tasks.cfg) kills xymonnet after 5 minutes, but
xymonnetagain is killed off after only 1 minute.  So if you have a lot of
hosts that are uncontactable, or have long ping times, then this might add
up to a minute.

To confirm this, check out the "xymonnet" dot on your Xymon server, and
look at the "TIME SPENT" table for ping test duration.

J


On 10 January 2013 17:12, Vernon Everett <user-b3f8dacb72c8@xymon.invalid> wrote:
Hi all

Anybody seen something like this?

Execution of '/usr/local/sbin/fping -Ae' failed with error-code 4


/usr/local/sbin/fping: select : Invalid argument

Error I see when xymonnet page goes red.
At the same time, all conn tests go white.
Happens briefly every few hours. No obvious pattern, but at least once a
day, sometimes twice.

This is a new installation of Xymon 4.3.10, on a relatively old Solaris
10 Sparc server.

Regards
Vernon

--
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton

-- 
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton