spong-client(8)

NAME

spong-client - report system information to spong server

SYNOPSIS

spong-client [ --debug|-d n ] [ --kill|--restart|--nosleep|--norefresh
] config-file

DESCRIPTION

This program is run on each Unix machine in which you want to monitor
local system attributes, and reports that information to the spong
server. It runs one or more configured checks. It then sleeps for a
time period you have defined in your configuration file and does it all again (it actually adds or subtracts a random amount of time - no more then 10% of the total you have specified, to keep clients from sync'ing up and overloading the spong-server).

The checks are modular in nature. You can configure the number of
checks to run and the order in which to run to them. The list of checks that are included are disk space, cpu load, running processes and log
files.

Format of update messages

It sends a message for each check to the spong server and reports the
following:

· hostname (where is this report coming from)

· service name ("disk", "cpu", "procs", "logs", "local")

· color ("red", "yellow", "green")

· a one line summary

· a more detailed message providing additional detail.

The color is determined by comparing the current status of that service against thresholds defined in the configuration file. If they are
greater then the level you have defined for a warning, then the color
is yellow. If they are greater then the critical level you have
defined then the color is red.

The one line summary provides information that might be useful at a
glance when looking at the overall system status (such as a brief
report on the load, number of users, and uptime).

The more detailed message contains information such as the complete
"df" output, or a listing of the top 10 processes sorted by CPU.

Running the program

You should start this program in your system startup file, and it
should be running constantly. If no parameters are specified, spongclient forks and detaches itself to run as a daemon.

If you provide the --debug n flag, then debugging information will be printed to stdout, otherwise output will only be produced if there is a problem. Where n is a number from 1 - 9. A higher number means more
verbosity in the debugging output.

If you provide the --restart flag, a signal will be sent to the spongclient process that is currently running that will cause it to reload
it's configuration files. If you provide the --kill flag, a signal will be sent to the running spong-client process causing it to exit.

The --nosleep or --refresh flag causes the program to cycle through all of the checks once then exit. These flags can be used to run spongclient as a cron job (depreciated), this reduces the effectiveness of the check_logs module.

Client Checks

The checks are actually a set of modules that are called in series by
spong-client. The list of modules to run are defined in the $CHECKS configuration variable. Upon initialization, spong-client will load the modules defined in $CHECKS from the LIBDIR/Spong/Client/plugins/ directory. As each module is initialized, it registers itself with the the plugins registry (see the Developer Guide).

Extending Functionality

Depreciated, please refer to "CLIENT MODULES" in developer-guide.

If you want to check some service which is not being checked by spongclient, then you can define a "&check_local()" function in your config file (either in your standard spong.conf config file or your host
specific spong.conf.hostname file - but not both!). That function can
do anything you want, but at the end needs to call the "&status()"
function to report what you have found to the spong server.

CONFIGURATION

Configuration Files

By default this reads the spong.conf file on startup. You can specify
an alternate config file via a command line option and it will read
that file instead. If you change values in the configuration file you
will need to restart this program for those changes to be re-read.

After reading the configuration file that you specify (or the default), it then reads the spong.conf.[hostname] file where [hostname] is the hostname of the machine that you are running on. Since these
configuration files are just standard perl code that gets imported, the variables that you define in the host specific config file will take
precedence over the standard configuration settings.

Configuration Variables

Here is a listing of the configuration variables applicable to the
spong-client program.

$SPONGSLEEP, $SPONGSERVER, $SPONG_UPDATE_PORT

Some basic spong configuration options that define how long to
sleep (in seconds) before checking the status of a service again,
the hostname of the spong server, and the port number that the
spong server listens

$SPONGSLEEP{'DEFAULT'}, $SPONGSLEEP{'spong-client'}

This the new method for specifying the $SPONGSLEEP interval for
Spong programs. If there is not $SPONGSLEEP{} entry for the
program, it will use the $SPONGSLEEP{'DEFAULT'} value. If no value is then found, spong-client fall back to using $SPONGSLEEP.

$SPONGTMP

The directory that Spong programs use for temporary store and work files. It should be a different directory than /tmp for operation and security reasons.

$SPONG_LOG_FILE

If set to 1, spong-client will log errors to a log file in $SPONGTMP named spong-client.log.

$SPONG_LOG_SYSLOG

If set to 1, spong-client will log errors to the syslog using the USER facility and the ERR priority.

$CHECKS

A string that has the list of client check modules to run. If
$CHECKS is missed or blank, spong-client defaults to "disk cpu processes logs". If the "check_local()" function is present then
'local' is appended.

$CPUWARN, $CPUCRIT

A number indicating the CPU load that triggers a problem ($CPUWARN triggers warnings - yellow, and $CPUCRIT triggers alerts - red).

@PROCSWARN, @PROCSCRIT

A list of processes that should be running, if they are not
running, then trigger a problem (processes in @PROCSWARN trigger a warning - yellow, and processes in @PROCSCRIT trigger an alert red).

$LOGCHECKS

A list of hashes which defined checks to apply to log files. Each
hash contains the fields:

logfile

which is the full path to the log file to check

checks

a list of check to apply to the log file.

Each check is a hash that contains the fields:

pattern

a Perl regular expression to be scanned for

status

the status color to reporte when lines match pattern

duration

the duration (in seconds) that each event is to be reported to the server

text

a string which is the the text to be reported back in the
detailed message field of the status report (which can include match position variables from pattern)

id an optional key field to associated with each event generated.

The default key is the evaluated text field. An id key may be specified for the for a check pattern. All hits of the pattern will be consolidated into one event. The data of the last hit
will be reported in the event.

$DF, $UPTIME, $PS, $GREP

These variables are OS specific variables, which are hopefully set correctly for your machine, if they are not - please send me email letting me know what OS you are running on, and what the correct
value should be.

FILES

spong.conf, spong.conf.[hostname]

EXAMPLES

spong-client --debug 5 --nosleep
spong-client --debug 5
spong-client --restart

DEPENDENCIES

Perl v5.005_03 or greater is required.

BUGS

No known bugs.

SEE ALSO

spong-server, spong.conf, client-modules, developer-guide

AUTHOR

Ed Hill <ed-hill@uiowa.edu>, Unix System Administrator, The University of Iowa

Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson@monsters.org>

HISTORY

Based on code/ideas from Sean MacGuire (BB), and Helen Harrison (Pong). Ed Hill original converted Big Brother (http://www.bb4.com) into Perl
which diverged from Big Brother to become Spong. Ed Hill continued
Spong development until version 2.1. Stephen L Johnson took over
development in October, 1999 with his changes which became Spong 2.5.

perl v5.10.0 2008-10-20 SPONG-CLIENT(8)