Man page of HOBBIT-CLIENTS.CFG

# HOBBIT-CLIENTS.CFG

Section: File Formats (5)
Updated: Version Exp: 9 Aug 2006
Index Return to Main Contents

## NAME

hobbit-clients.cfg - Configuration file for the hobbitd_client module

## SYNOPSIS

~hobbit/server/etc/hobbit-clients.cfg

## DESCRIPTION

The hobbit-clients.cfg file controls what color is assigned to the status-messages that are generated from the Hobbit client data - typically the cpu, disk, memory, procs- and msgs-columns. Color is decided on the basis of some settings defined in this file; settings apply to specific hosts through a set of rules.

Note: This file is only used on the Hobbit server - it is not used by the Hobbit client, so there is no need to distribute it to your client systems.

## FILE FORMAT

Blank lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are treated as comments and ignored.

## CPU STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

LOAD warnlevel paniclevel

If the system load exceeds "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the "cpu" status will go yellow or red, respectively. These are decimal numbers.

Defaults: warnlevel=5.0, paniclevel=10.0

UP bootlimit toolonglimit

The cpu status goes yellow if the system has been up for less than "bootlimit" time, or longer than "toolonglimit". The time is in minutes, or you can add h/d/w for hours/days/weeks - eg. "2h" for two hours, or "4w" for 4 weeks.

Defaults: bootlimit=1h, toolonglimit=-1 (infinite).

CLOCK max.offset

The cpu status goes yellow if the system clock on the client differs more than "max.offset" seconds from that of the Hobbit server. Note that this is not a particularly accurate test, since it is affected by network delays between the client and the server, and the load on both systems. You should therefore not rely on this being accurate to more than +/- 5 seconds, but it will let you catch a client clock that goes completely wrong. The default is NOT to check the system clock.
NOTE: Correct operation of this test obviously requires that the system clock of the Hobbit server is correct. You should therefore make sure that the Hobbit server is synchronized to the real clock, e.g. by using NTP.

Example: Go yellow if the load average exceeds 5, and red if it exceeds 10. Also, go yellow for 10 minutes after a reboot, and after 4 weeks uptime. Finally, check that the system clock is at most 15 seconds offset from the clock of the Hobbit system.

      LOAD 5 10
      UP 10m 4w
      CLOCK 15

## DISK STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

DISK filesystem warnlevel paniclevel DISK filesystem IGNORE

If the utilization of "filesystem" is reported to exceed "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the "disk" status will go yellow or red, respectively. "warnlevel" and "paniclevel" are either the percentage used, or the space available as reported by the local "df" command on the host. For the latter type of check, the "warnlevel" must be followed by the letter "U", e.g. "1024U".

The special keyword "IGNORE" causes this filesystem to be ignored completely, i.e. it will not appear in the "disk" status column and it will not be tracked in a graph. This is useful for e.g. removable devices, backup-disks and similar hardware.

"filesystem" is the mount-point where the filesystem is mounted, e.g. "/usr" or "/home". A filesystem-name that begins with "%" is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular expression; e.g. "%^/oracle.*/" will match any filesystem whose mountpoint begins with "/oracle".

Defaults: warnlevel=90%, paniclevel=95%

## MEMORY STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

MEMPHYS warnlevel paniclevel
MEMACT warnlevel paniclevel
MEMSWAP warnlevel paniclevel

If the memory utilization exceeds the "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the "memory" status will change to yellow or red, respectively. Note: The words "PHYS", "ACT" and "SWAP" are also recognized.

Example: Go yellow if more than 20% swap is used, and red if more than 40% swap is used or the actual memory utilisation exceeds 90%. Dont alert on physical memory usage.

      MEMSWAP 20 40
      MEMACT 90 90
      MEMPHYS 101 101

Defaults:

      MEMPHYS warnlevel=100 paniclevel=101 (i.e. it will never go red).
      MEMSWAP warnlevel=50 paniclevel=80
      MEMACT  warnlevel=90 paniclevel=97

## PROCS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

PROC processname minimumcount maximumcount color [TRACK=id] [TEXT=text]

The "ps" listing sent by the client will be scanned for how many processes containing "processname" are running, and this is then matched against the min/max settings defined here. If the running count is outside the thresholds, the color of the "procs" status changes to "color".

To check for a process that must NOT be running: Set minimum and maximum to 0.

"processname" can be a simple string, in which case this string must show up in the "ps" listing as a command. The scanner will find a ps-listing of e.g. "/usr/sbin/cron" if you only specify "processname" as "cron". "processname" can also be a Perl-compatiable regular expression, e.g. "%java.*inst[0123]" can be used to find entries in the ps-listing for "java -Xmx512m inst2" and "java -Xmx256 inst3". In that case, "processname" must begin with "%" followed by the regular expression. Note that Hobbit defaults to case-insensitive pattern matching; if that is not what you want, put "(?-i)" between the "%" and the regular expression to turn this off. E.g. "%(?-i)HTTPD" will match the word HTTPD only when it is upper-case.
If "processname" contains whitespace (blanks or TAB), you must enclose the full string in double quotes - including the "%" if you use regular expression matching. E.g.

PROC "%hobbitd_channel --channel=data.*hobbitd_rrd" 1 1 yellow

or

PROC "java -DCLASSPATH=/opt/java/lib" 2 5

You can have multiple "PROC" entries for the same host, all of the checks are merged into the "procs" status and the most severe check defines the color of the status.

The optional TRACK=id setting causes Hobbit to track the number of processes found in an RRD file, and put this into a graph which is shown on the "procs" status display. The id setting is a simple text string which will be used as the legend for the graph, and also as part of the RRD filename. It is recommended that you use only letters and digits for the ID.
Note that the process counts which are tracked are only performed once when the client does a poll cycle - i.e. the counts represent snapshots of the system state, not an average value over the client poll cycle. Therefore there may be peaks or dips in the actual process counts which will not show up in the graphs, because they happen while the Hobbit client is not doing any polling.

The optional TEXT=text setting is used in the summary of the "procs" status. Normally, the summary will show the "processname" to identify the process and the related count and limits. But this may be a regular expression which is not easily recognizable, so if defined, the text setting string will be used instead. This only affects the "procs" status display - it has no effect on how the rule counts or recognizes processes in the "ps" output.

Example: Check that "cron" is running:
`` PROC cron

Example: Check that at least 5 "httpd" processes are running, but not more than 20:
`` PROC httpd 5 20

Defaults:
`` mincount=1, maxcount=-1 (unlimited), color="red".
`` Note that no processes are checked by default.

## MSGS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

LOG logfilename pattern [COLOR=color] [IGNORE=excludepattern]

The Hobbit client extracts interesting lines from one or more logfiles - see the client-local.cfg(5) man-page for information about how to configure which logs a client should look at.

The LOG setting determine how these extracts of log entries are processed, and what warnings or alerts trigger as a result.

"logfilename" is the name of the logfile. Only logentries from this filename will be matched against this rule. Note that "logfilename" can be a regular expression (if prefixed with a '%' character).

"pattern" is a string or regular expression. If the logfile data matches "pattern", it will trigger the "msgs" column to change color. If no "color" parameter is present, the default is to go "red" when the pattern is matched. To match against a regular expression, "pattern" must begin with a '%' sign - e.g "%WARNING|NOTICE" will match any lines containing either of these two words. Note that Hobbit defaults to case-insensitive pattern matching; if that is not what you want, put "(?-i)" between the "%" and the regular expression to turn this off. E.g. "%(?-i)WARNING" will match the word WARNING only when it is upper-case.

"excludepattern" is a string or regular expression that can be used to filter out any unwanted strings that happen to match "pattern".

Example: Trigger a red alert when the string "ERROR" appears in the "/var/adm/syslog" file:
`` LOG /var/adm/syslog ERROR

Example: Trigger a yellow warning on all occurrences of the word "WARNING" or "NOTICE" in the "daemon.log" file, except those from the "lpr" system:
`` LOG /var/log/daemon.log %WARNING|NOTICE COLOR=yellow IGNORE=lpr

Defaults:
`` color="red", no "excludepattern".

Note that no logfiles are checked by default. Any log data reported by a client will just show up on the "msgs" column with status OK (green).

## FILES STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

FILE filename [color] [things to check] [TRACK]

DIR directoryname [color] [size<MAXSIZE] [size>MINSIZE] [TRACK]

These entries control the status of the "files" column. They allow you to check on various data for files and directories.

filename and directoryname are names of files or directories, with a full path. You can use a regular expression to match the names of files and directories reported by the client, if you prefix the expression with a '%' character.

color is the color that triggers when one or more of the checks fail.

The TRACK keyword causes the size of the file or directory to be tracked in an RRD file, and presented in a graph on the "files" status display.

For files, you can check one or more of the following:

noexist
  triggers a warning if the file exists. By default, a warning is triggered for files that have a FILE entry, but which do not exist.
type=TYPE
  where TYPE is one of "file", "dir", "char", "block", "fifo", or "socket". Triggers warning if the file is not of the specified type.
ownerid=OWNER
  triggers a warning if the owner does not match what is listed here. OWNER is specified either with the numeric uid, or the user name.
groupid=GROUP
  triggers a warning if the group does not match what is listed here. GROUP is specified either with the numeric gid, or the group name.
mode=MODE
  triggers a warning if the file permissions are not as listed. MODE is written in the standard octal notation, e.g. "644" for the rw-r--r-- permissions.
size<MAX.SIZE and size>MIN.SIZE
  triggers a warning it the file size is greater than MAX.SIZE or less than MIN.SIZE, respectively. For filesizes, you can use the letters "K", "M", "G" or "T" to indicate that the filesize is in Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes or Terabytes, respectively. If there is no such modifier, Kilobytes is assumed. E.g. to warn if a file grows larger than 1MB, use size<1024M.
mtime>MIN.MTIME mtime<MAX.MTIME
  checks how long ago the file was last modified (in seconds). E.g. to check if a file was updated within the past 10 minutes (600 seconds): mtime<600. Or to check that a file has NOT been updated in the past 24 hours: mtime>86400.
mtime=TIMESTAMP
  checks if a file was last modified at TIMESTAMP. TIMESTAMP is a unix epoch time (seconds since midnight Jan 1 1970 UTC).
ctime>MIN.CTIME, ctime<MAX.CTIME, ctime=TIMESTAMP
  acts as the mtime checks, but for the ctime timestamp (when the directory entry of the file was last changed, eg. by chown, chgrp or chmod).
md5=MD5SUM, sha1=SHA1SUM, rmd160=RMD160SUM
  trigger a warning if the file checksum using the MD5, SHA1 or RMD160 message digest algorithms do not match the one configured here. Note: The "file" entry in the client-local.cfg(5) file must specify which algorithm to use.

For directories, you can check one or more of the following:

size<MAX.SIZE and size>MIN.SIZE
  triggers a warning it the directory size is greater than MAX.SIZE or less than MIN.SIZE, respectively. Directory sizes are reported in whatever unit the du command on the client uses - often KB or diskblocks - so MAX.SIZE and MIN.SIZE must be given in the same unit.

Experience shows that it can be difficult to get these rules right. Especially when defining minimum/maximum values for file sizes, when they were last modified etc. The one thing you must remember when setting up these checks is that the rules describe criteria that must be met - only when they are met will the status be green.

So "mtime<600" means "the difference between current time and the mtime of the file must be less than 600 seconds - if not, the file status will go red".

## PORTS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS

PORT criteria [MIN=mincount] [MAX=maxcount] [COLOR=color] [TRACK=id] [TEXT=displaytext]

The "netstat" listing sent by the client will be scanned for how many sockets match the criteria listed. The criteria you can use are:

LOCAL=addr
  "addr" is a (partial) local address specification in the format used on the output from netstat.
EXLOCAL=addr
  Exclude certain local adresses from the rule.
REMOTE=addr
  "addr" is a (partial) remote address specification in the format used on the output from netstat.
EXREMOTE=addr
  Exclude certain remote adresses from the rule.
STATE=state
  Causes only the sockets in the specified state to be included, "state" is usually LISTEN or ESTABLISHED but can be any socket state reported by the clients "netstat" command.
EXSTATE=state
  Exclude certain states from the rule.

"addr" is typically "10.0.0.1:80" for the IP 10.0.0.1, port 80. Or "*:80" for any local address, port 80. Note that the Hobbit clients normally report only the numeric data for IP-adresses and port-numbers, so you must specify the port number (e.g. "80") instead of the service name ("www").
"addr" and "state" can also be a Perl-compatiable regular expression, e.g. "LOCAL=%[.:](80|443)" can be used to find entries in the netstat local port for both http (port 80) and https (port 443). In that case, portname or state must begin with "%" followed by the reg.expression.

The socket count found is then matched against the min/max settings defined here. If the count is outside the thresholds, the color of the "ports" status changes to "color". To check for a socket that must NOT exist: Set minimum and maximum to 0.

The optional TRACK=id setting causes Hobbit to track the number of sockets found in an RRD file, and put this into a graph which is shown on the "ports" status display. The id setting is a simple text string which will be used as the legend for the graph, and also as part of the RRD filename. It is recommended that you use only letters and digits for the ID.
Note that the sockets counts which are tracked are only performed once when the client does a poll cycle - i.e. the counts represent snapshots of the system state, not an average value over the client poll cycle. Therefore there may be peaks or dips in the actual sockets counts which will not show up in the graphs, because they happen while the Hobbit client is not doing any polling.

The TEXT=displaytext option affects how the port appears on the "ports" status page. By default, the port is listed with the local/remote/state rules as identification, but this may be somewhat difficult to understand. You can then use e.g. "TEXT=Secure Shell" to make these ports appear with the name "Secure Shell" instead.

Defaults: mincount=1, maxcount=-1 (unlimited), color="red". Note: No ports are checked by default.

Example: Check that the SSH daemon is listening on port 22. Track the number of active SSH connections, and warn if there are more than 5.
PORT LOCAL=%[.:]22$ STATE=LISTEN "TEXT=SSH listener"
PORT LOCAL=%[.:]22$ STATE=ESTABLISHED MAX=5 TRACK=ssh TEXT=SSH

## CHANGING THE DEFAULT SETTINGS

If you would like to use different defaults for the settings described above, then you can define the new defaults after a DEFAULT line. E.g. this would explicitly define all of the default settings:

      DEFAULT
              UP      1h
              LOAD    5.0 10.0
              DISK    * 90 95
              MEMPHYS 100 101
              MEMSWAP 50 80
              MEMACT  90 97

## RULES TO SELECT HOSTS

All of the settings can be applied to a group of hosts, by preceding them with rules. A rule defines of one of more filters using these keywords (note that this is identical to the rule definitions used in the hobbit-alerts.cfg(5) file).

PAGE=targetstring Rule matching an alert by the name of the page in BB. "targetstring" is the path of the page as defined in the bb-hosts file. E.g. if you have this setup:

      page servers All Servers
      subpage web Webservers
      10.0.0.1 www1.foo.com
      subpage db Database servers
      10.0.0.2 db1.foo.com

Then the "All servers" page is found with PAGE=servers, the "Webservers" page is PAGE=servers/web and the "Database servers" page is PAGE=servers/db. Note that you can also use regular expressions to specify the page name, e.g. PAGE=%.*/db would find the "Database servers" page regardless of where this page was placed in the hierarchy.

The top-level page has a the fixed name /, e.g. PAGE=/ would match all hosts on the Hobbit frontpage. If you need it in a regular expression, use PAGE=%^/ to avoid matching the forward-slash present in subpage-names.

EXPAGE=targetstring Rule excluding a host if the pagename matches.

HOST=targetstring Rule matching a host by the hostname. "targetstring" is either a comma-separated list of hostnames (from the bb-hosts file), "*" to indicate "all hosts", or a Perl-compatible regular expression. E.g. "HOST=dns.foo.com,www.foo.com" identifies two specific hosts; "HOST=%www.*.foo.com EXHOST=www-test.foo.com" matches all hosts with a name beginning with "www", except the "www-test" host.

EXHOST=targetstring Rule excluding a host by matching the hostname.

CLASS=classname Rule match by the client class-name. You specify the class-name for a host when starting the client through the "--class=NAME" option to the runclient.sh script. If no class is specified, the host by default goes into a class named by the operating system.

EXCLASS=classname Exclude all hosts belonging to "classname" from this rule.

TIME=timespecification Rule matching by the time-of-day. This is specified as the DOWNTIME time specification in the bb-hosts file. E.g. "TIME=W:0800:2200" applied to a rule will make this rule active only on week-days between 8AM and 10PM.

## DIRECTING ALERTS TO GROUPS

For some tests - e.g. "procs" or "msgs" - the right group of people to alert in case of a failure may be different, depending on which of the client rules actually detected a problem. E.g. if you have PROCS rules for a host checking both "httpd" and "sshd" processes, then the Web admins should handle httpd-failures, whereas "sshd" failures are handled by the Unix admins.

To handle this, all rules can have a "GROUP=groupname" setting. When a rule with this setting triggers a yellow or red status, the groupname is passed on to the Hobbit alerts module, so you can use it in the alert rule definitions in hobbit-alerts.cfg(5) to direct alerts to the correct group of people.

## RULES: APPLYING SETTINGS TO SELECTED HOSTS

Rules must be placed after the settings, e.g.

      LOAD 8.0 12.0  HOST=db.foo.com TIME=*:0800:1600

If you have multiple settings that you want to apply the same rules to, you can write the rules *only* on one line, followed by the settings. E.g.

      HOST=%db.*.foo.com TIME=W:0800:1600
              LOAD 8.0 12.0
              DISK /db  98 100
              PROC mysqld 1

will apply the three settings to all of the "db" hosts on week-days between 8AM and 4PM. This can be combined with per-settings rule, in which case the per-settings rule overrides the general rule; e.g.

      HOST=%.*.foo.com
              LOAD 7.0 12.0 HOST=bax.foo.com
              LOAD 3.0 8.0

will result in the load-limits being 7.0/12.0 for the "bax.foo.com" host, and 3.0/8.0 for all other foo.com hosts.

The entire file is evaluated from the top to bottom, and the first match found is used. So you should put the specific settings first, and the generic ones last.

## NOTES

For the LOG, FILE and DIR checks, it is necessary also to configure the actual file- and directory-names in the client-local.cfg(5) file. If the filenames are not listed there, the clients will not collect any data about these files/directories, and the settings in the hobbit-clients.cfg file will be silently ignored.

The ability to compute file checksums with MD5, SHA1 or RMD160 should not be used for general-purpose file integrity checking, since the overhead of calculating these on a large number of files can be significant. If you need this, look at tools designed for this purpose - e.g. Tripwire or AIDE.

At the time of writing (april 2006), the SHA-1 and RMD160 algorithms are considered cryptographically safe. The MD5 algorithm has been shown to have some weaknesses, and is not considered strong enough when a high level of security is required.

## SEE ALSO

hobbitd_client(8), client-local.cfg(5), hobbitd(8), hobbit(7)

## Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
FILE FORMAT
CPU STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
DISK STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
MEMORY STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
PROCS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
MSGS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
FILES STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
PORTS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
CHANGING THE DEFAULT SETTINGS
RULES TO SELECT HOSTS
DIRECTING ALERTS TO GROUPS
RULES: APPLYING SETTINGS TO SELECTED HOSTS
NOTES
SEE ALSO

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 19:49:57 GMT, August 09, 2006