spong-network(8)

NAME

spong-network - report network service information to spong server.

SYNOPSIS

spong-network [--debug n] [--kill|--restart|--nosleep|--refresh]
                 [config_file]

DESCRIPTION

This checks network connectivity and network service availability to
various machines you want to monitor. It reports the status of the
network services that it monitors to the spong server. Everything
happens again after sleeping for a time period you have defined in your configuration file. This program typically runs on your spong server
machine (although it can be run on any host - although I would suggest one with good network connectivity).

The program checks a series of network services that are configured
separately for each host. spong-network also can be very aggressive in checking for network service that are down. You can configure multiple rechecks to guard against transitional failures.
Running the program: You should start this program in your system startup file, and it
should be running constantly. If no parameters are specified, spongnetwork 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 spongnetwork 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-network 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 spongnetwork as a cron job (depreciated), but it recommended that you run the program continuously.
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 output of
the ping command from the check ping module or the data read after
testing a network service.
Network Checks: The check are actually a setup of modules that are called in series by spong-network. Upon initialization, spong-network will load the all of the modules that will be used from the LIBDIR/Spong/Network/plugins directory. As each module is initialized, it registers itself with the plugins registry (see the Developer Guide).; The list of network checks and the order the are performed that are
performed for a host are defined in the services attribute of the host's entry in the %HOST variable. The ping service is appended by default to all of the lists of services to be check for a host. If the meta-service name of noping is defined for a host, the ping check will no be done for the host.

CONFIGURATION

Configuration Files: spong.conf
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.; spong.conf.[hostname]
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.; spong.hosts
spong-network reads all of the host that are to be check from the %HOSTS variable in the spong.hosts file. The list of services to be check for each host is already read from spong.hosts.
Configuration Variables: From spong.conf:; $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-network'}
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-network will log errors to a log file in $SPONGTMP named spong-network.log.; $SPONG_LOG_SYSLOG
If set to 1, spong-network will log errors to the syslog using the USER facility and the ERR priority.; From spong.hosts:; %HOSTS
All of the host names defined in %HOSTS are the list of hosts that spong-network will check. The services defined in the services attribute are the list of services that will be checked for each
host. The ping service is prepended to the list of services unless 'noping' is defined.

Another important attribute for a host is the skip_network_checks
flag. If this flag is set for a host, the spong-network program will skip the check for the host.

FILES

spong.conf, spong.conf.hostname, spong.hosts

DEPENDENCIES

Perl v5.005_03 or greater is required.

BUGS

The check_dns module uses the Net::DNS Perl module. On some systems the Net::DNS module will fail and start reporting false DNS lookup
failures. The cause is unknown at present. This will cause dns check
for all hosts to fail and be reported as a critical status. The fix is to restart spong-network (i.e. spong-network --restart ),

A work-around is to regularly do restart spong-network, such as from a cron job.

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.

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