Differences between bb and hobbit - 🔗 link

On 11/5/07, Sloan <user-b1d2c84d244b@xymon.invalid> wrote:

Hello list,

I've gotten a pair of hobbit servers set up, one in each data center, in
a specific lan.

I'm noticing that, due to the many transient network glitches in wan
connectivity, that the hobbit history shows a lot of
red/green/red/green. This appears to be different behavior from bb,
which gives us some knobs to turn, mitigating the effects of the
transient glitches and preventing the alternating red/green connectivity
status. (We've got people watching bbdisplay pages, who panic when they
see red.)

If a bb-net test fails, bb waits "n" seconds and tries again, and if it
still fails, it waits "m" seconds and tries a third time, and if that
fails as well, the connectivity goes red. The delays between try 1 and
try 2, and the delay between try 2 and try 3, are configurable in bb,
but I don't see any such option in hobbit, nor is it obvious whether
there is more than 1 attempt made to perform a network test.

Can anyone confirm or deny that this is the case, and if not, point me
to the correct configuration option?

Thanks & Regards,

Joe

On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 04:26:17PM -0800, Sloan wrote:

I'm noticing that, due to the many transient network glitches in wan
connectivity, that the hobbit history shows a lot of
red/green/red/green. This appears to be different behavior from bb,
which gives us some knobs to turn, mitigating the effects of the
transient glitches and preventing the alternating red/green connectivity
status. (We've got people watching bbdisplay pages, who panic when they
see red.)

Henrik Stoerner wrote:

Hobbit uses either "hobbitping" or "fping" to do the network tests. Both
have commandline options that you can use to make them more tolerant of
brief network outages, see their man-pages.

If that is not sufficient (ie the transient glitches last more than 30
seconds), then you can use the "badconn:A:B:C" setting in the bb-hosts
file to delay when the status goes red. From the bb-hosts man-page:

    Normally  when  a  network  test fails, the status changes to 
    red immediately.  With a "badTEST:x:y:z" tag this behaviour 
    changes:
    * While "z" or more successive tests fail, the column goes RED.
    * While "y" or more successive tests fail, but fewer than "z", 
      the column goes YELLOW.
    * While "x" or more successive tests fail, but fewer than "y", 
      the column goes CLEAR.

If you're monitoring hosts behind these unstable WAN links, you may also
want to look at the "depends" tag so you won't generate alerts on the
hosts when the WAN link to them is down.

  

Larry Barber wrote:

Look up "badhttp" in the bb-hosts man pages.

Thanks,
Larry Barber

On 11/5/07, *Sloan* <user-b1d2c84d244b@xymon.invalid <mailto:user-b1d2c84d244b@xymon.invalid>> wrote:

    Hello list,

    I've gotten a pair of hobbit servers set up, one in each data
    center, in
    a specific lan.

    I'm noticing that, due to the many transient network glitches in wan
    connectivity, that the hobbit history shows a lot of
    red/green/red/green. This appears to be different behavior from bb,
    which gives us some knobs to turn, mitigating the effects of the
    transient glitches and preventing the alternating red/green
    connectivity
    status. (We've got people watching bbdisplay pages, who panic when
    they
    see red.)

    If a bb-net test fails, bb waits "n" seconds and tries again, and
    if it
    still fails, it waits "m" seconds and tries a third time, and if that
    fails as well, the connectivity goes red. The delays between try 1
    and
    try 2, and the delay between try 2 and try 3, are configurable in bb,
    but I don't see any such option in hobbit, nor is it obvious whether
    there is more than 1 attempt made to perform a network test.

    Can anyone confirm or deny that this is the case, and if not, point me
    to the correct configuration option?

    Thanks & Regards,

    Joe