Easymonitor / Easylook FAQ
1. How do I add an equipment to monitoring?
This depends on which equipment you want to add. If you want to add a system equipment, it is recommended to use ssh (*not* telnet) to connect to it and grab information from it. If you want to add a network equiment, you probably still want to use telnet.
So, to add an equipment to database, run the "addequipmentwrapper" script you got with the Easymonitor sources. There is a so called script in both "system" and "network" directories. You will need to customize your "databases" file in both of those directories.
See the ssh keys mini FAQ to find out how to set up ssh keys for authentication.
2. I have got the .tar.gz - What do I have to do to get things working?
You need Perl running on yuor system, which is nowaday the case of all linux distributions as far as I know. You also need a few perl modules :
* DBD::mSQL / DBD::mysql
* Net::SSH
* Net::Telnet
(you can find informations about where to get these in the INSTALL file from the Easymonitor package)
You also need a mysql database - or several !
To use Easylook, the web interface, you need an apache server that supports CGI. All CGIs are written in Perl.
3. What is this project's aim and how does that stuff work?
First aim is to be able to have access in a glance at hardware equiments in large organizations. This project allows you to get that kind of information easily. You want to check all of your servers that have a 3com NIC? You want to see if your servers have SCSI or IDE disks? what disks sizes are? What IOS do my cisco routers run? etc etc
All these informations, aside with others, are automatically monitored and browsable and searchable to you.
4. What kind of equipments are supported?
On the system point of view, both linux and freebsd systems are supported. Linux support is better than freebsd, since the /proc filesystem is there to help on linux.
On the network side, cisco 2500, 2600, 7200 and 7500 are currently supported. Some foundry support is being added. Later will Lucent support come as well.
5. I want to monitor something else. How hard is it to add support for a new kind of equipment?
It is designed to be easy. You will have to know a bit of regexp and that's it.
Practically, have a look at the create_tables.pl scripts (one in network directory, one in system)
You will find entries such as "$dbh->do("INSERT INTO SystemGetInfoFromHost (OSName,OSRelease,InfoToGet,RemoteCommand,LocalCommand) VALUES (\"linux\",\"\",\"OSName\",\"uname\",\"lowercase.pl\")");"
The "RemoteCommand" entry is the command that will be run on monitored machine to get the "InfoToGet", and then the "LocalCommand" entry is a filtering rule on output of command.
Check for more complex analysises (multiple lines, multiple entries in database), for instance on the SoftwareName entries.
Feel free to send me email if you have questions. Also email me if you add support for new stuff! I will love to include your patches in the project.