Changelog April 2008

A few bugs detected. Many things had been either fixed,ignored,or upgraded. Plus, many new experiments took place since February.

Government - positively fixed on 8th March with 5 state won by Opposition and denied 2/3 majority of Barisan Nasional in Dewan Rakyat.

Traffic jam - fixed with my new Honda Wave S 125. Automatically fixed a sleepy morning blues at the office.

Bugs detected, current office shoe not waterproof - to be replaced with a slipper or Waterproof Hi-Tec shoes. I went for the shoe.

Bugs detected, Redhat jacket is not waterproof (learn it a hard way) - to be replaced with infamous GIVI rain coat.

Boredom - fixed with a week trip to Indonesia. Request a status change from boredom to credit card headache.

Baby - upgraded to a toddler.

My Support Team - added 2 more executives, total up to 9 effective support personnels. A lot of things has been self cured. Still has a room for improvement. But sincerely, I'm proud of you guys. To be improved with a new Department Head(coming soon).

Annoying colleague,client - to be ignored until ermm (to be decided later)

Loving wife - equipped with company notebook, finally.

Inspiron 510m notebook with XP - upgraded RAM to 2GB, only to find the hibernation not working. Fixed with this patch. Thanks in advance(not tested yet).

Active request:
A notebook bag for wife (slimline paris from mobile edge is so tempting)
A house (hopefully by year end)
A new job (KIV aiyahh)

more...

less...

P-r-o-d-u-c-t-i-v-i-t-y

I am no motivator to preach about productivity. But when instant messenger is banned as the main cause of low productivity, I think somebody somewhere is missing a bigger picture. It is like preventing a driver to have a passenger for a long ride. He still can drive a car with no problem but boredom. Somehow he will find another way to get freshen up(eg stop for a snack/ciggy), and that will eventually still slowing him down. We have to admit, under normal circumstances, different people has different productive time. You cannot expect them to give 100 percent focusing on the job from 9 to 5. This is not a NASCAR race.

And it is depends on the nature of the job. A good system administrator will spend almost all his time doing other things besides reading mail because almost all tasks have been taken care of automatically. All backups will go smoothly as scheduled with minimal user intervention. Any abnormal activities will be alerted via email or sms. And no one can simply say that he's not productive in doing his work. He's just doing his work a smart way, not the hard way as what productivity suggested.

It is depends also on how your boss see things. I remember one episode of Seinfeld, where George got an idea how to fool his boss. He drove his car early in the morning and parked it near his boss 's parking space, then went home by bus. His boss then noticed George's car every time he parked his car and when he wanted to return home. His boss thought that George is a morning person and loves working late. What he did not know that George was spending time somewhere else and produce zero output. It is unethical but it works(at least for George).

For me, as a Moslem, I am bound to the what religion says. It is now depends on how God see things. As a Moslem, everything I do, I do it for God. And God always watching me and that thought will keep me away for any wrongdoings in life, Insyallah. If I cheat in my job, I might fool my boss but then I'll have a problem with the God. And I am very sure I don't want to come to that. Live for Islam, Die for Islam, 1 vote for PAS.

more...

less...

And then nagios asked "Hi servers, how are you today?"

There are quite a numbers of Network or Health Monitoring System. Being an opensource user I have shortlisted several of them; nagios, zabbix, zenoss, opennms. If you really need a quick one, choose zabbix, then you got yourself a car. If you got time, learn nagios. You'll be given an engine, then you have to choose the type of body, rear wheel drive or 4 wheel drive, how many doors do you want and so on, until finally you got yourself a car. OpenNMS has the enterprise look but like zabbix, quite dependant on SNMP but not as easy to install. Zenoss has gained a good position in term of ranking at sourceforge.net and currently is ranked at no 9. I might wanna try to look at this(and openNMS) later on but in the meantime, nagios, i choose you.

This guide is intended for those using Redhat,Fedora,Centos and I have added some steps to fit my needs. This steps works for me but I am not responsible for what you are going to do to your system. Like any other system admins, you should always have and setup a test server before put it into production.

refer http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/quickstart-fedora.html for original quickstart documentation

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide you with simple instructions on how to install Nagios from source (code) on Fedora and have it monitoring your local machine inside of 20 minutes. No advanced installation options are discussed here - just the basics that will work for 95% of users who want to get started.

These instructions were written based on a standard Fedora Core 6 Linux distribution.

What You'll End Up With

If you follow these instructions, here's what you'll end up with:

* Nagios and the plugins will be installed underneath /usr/local/nagios
* Nagios will be configured to monitor a few aspects of your local system (CPU load, disk usage, etc.)
* The Nagios web interface will be accessible at http://localhost/nagios/

Prerequisites

During portions of the installation you'll need to have root access to your machine.

Make sure you've installed the following packages on your Fedora installation before continuing.

* Apache
* GCC compiler
* GD development libraries
* RRDtool

You can use yum to install these packages by running the following commands (as root):

# yum install httpd
# yum install gcc
# yum install glibc glibc-common
# yum install gd gd-devel gd-progs
# yum install rrdtool

1) Create Account Information

Become the root user.

# su -l

Create a new nagios user account and give it a password.

# /usr/sbin/useradd nagios
# passwd nagios

Create a new nagcmd group for allowing external commands to be submitted through the web interface. Add both the nagios user and the apache user to the group.

# /usr/sbin/groupadd nagcmd
# /usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd nagios
# /usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd apache

2) Download Nagios and the Plugins

Create a directory for storing the downloads.

# mkdir ~/downloads
# cd ~/downloads

Download the source code tarballs of both Nagios and the Nagios plugins (visit http://www.nagios.org/download/ for links to the latest versions). At the time of writing, the latest versions of Nagios and the Nagios plugins were 3.0rc1 and 1.4.11, respectively.

# wget http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-3.0rc1.tar.gz
# wget http://osdn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz

3) Compile and Install Nagios

Extract the Nagios source code tarball.

# cd ~/downloads
# tar xzf nagios-3.0rc1.tar.gz
# cd nagios-3.0rc1

Run the Nagios configure script, passing the name of the group you created earlier like so:

# ./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd

Compile the Nagios source code.

# make all

Install binaries, init script, sample config files and set permissions on the external command directory.

# make install
# make install-init
# make install-config
# make install-commandmode

Don't start Nagios yet - there's still more that needs to be done...

4) Customize Configuration

Sample configuration files have now been installed in the /usr/local/nagios/etc directory. These sample files should work fine for getting started with Nagios. You'll need to make just one change before you proceed...

Edit the /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg config file with your favorite editor and change the email address associated with the nagiosadmin contact definition to the address you'd like to use for receiving alerts.

# vi /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg

5) Configure the Web Interface

Install the Nagios web config file in the Apache conf.d directory.

# make install-webconf

Create a nagiosadmin account for logging into the Nagios web interface. Remember the password you assign to this account - you'll need it later.

# htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

create a file called .htaccess in /usr/local/nagios/sbin containing:

AuthUserFile /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users
AuthName "Welcome To Nagios"
AuthType Basic
Require valid-user

Restart Apache to make the new settings take effect.

service httpd restart

6) Compile and Install the Nagios Plugins

Extract the Nagios plugins source code tarball.

# cd ~/downloads
# tar xzf nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz
# cd nagios-plugins-1.4.11

Compile and install the plugins.

# ./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios
# make
# make install

7) Start Nagios

Add Nagios to the list of system services and have it automatically start when the system boots.

# chkconfig --add nagios
# chkconfig nagios on

Verify the sample Nagios configuration files.

# /usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

If there are no errors, start Nagios.

# service nagios start

8) Modify SELinux Settings

Fedora ships with SELinux (Security Enhanced Linux) installed and in Enforcing mode by default. This can result in "Internal Server Error" messages when you attempt to access the Nagios CGIs.

See if SELinux is in Enforcing mode.

getenforce

Put SELinux into Permissive mode.

setenforce 0

To make this change permanent, you'll have to modify the settings in /etc/selinux/config and reboot.

Instead of disabling SELinux or setting it to permissive mode, you can use the following command to run the CGIs under SELinux enforcing/targeted mode:

# chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /usr/local/nagios/sbin/
# chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t /usr/local/nagios/share/

For information on running the Nagios CGIs under Enforcing mode with a targeted policy, visit the NagiosCommunity.org wiki at http://www.nagioscommunity.org/wiki.

9) Login to the Web Interface

You should now be able to access the Nagios web interface at the URL below. You'll be prompted for the username (nagiosadmin) and password you specified earlier.

http://localhost/nagios/

Click on the "Service Detail" navbar link to see details of what's being monitored on your local machine. It will take a few minutes for Nagios to check all the services associated with your machine, as the checks are spread out over time.

10) Other Modifications

Make sure your machine's firewall rules are configured to allow access to the web server if you want to access the Nagios interface remotely.

Configuring email notifications is out of the scope of this documentation. While Nagios is currently configured to send you email notifications, your system may not yet have a mail program properly installed or configured. Refer to your system documentation, search the web, or look to the NagiosCommunity.org wiki for specific instructions on configuring your system to send email messages to external addresses. More information on notifications can be found here.

11) You're Done(Well, I'm not)

Congratulations! You sucessfully installed Nagios. Your journey into monitoring is just beginning. You'll no doubt want to monitor more than just your local machine, so check out the following docs...

* Monitoring Windows machines
* Monitoring Linux/Unix machines
* Monitoring Netware servers
* Monitoring routers/switches
* Monitoring publicly available services (HTTP, FTP, SSH, etc.)

12) Beautify it a lil bit

Download nuvola style front-end from nagiosexchange.org.
Browse also for some other interesting logo package available there.
Previously, I used whiteline.zip and extract it into /usr/local/nagios/share/images/logos
# mkdir /usr/local/nuvola
# cd /usr/local/nuvola
# tar -zxvf ~/downloads/nagios-nuvola-1.0.3.tar.gz

Backup(just in case)
# cp /usr/local/nagios/share /usr/local/nagios/share.old
# cp -rf html/ /usr/local/nagios/share
edit /usr/local/nagios/share/config.js to make sure cgi-bin pointing to the right path and some other option

Done.

13) Replace nagios logo with your custom logo in statusmap

make sure you have install gd-progs package
turn your logo into gif or png format(eg mine.gif) and put it in /usr/local/nagios/share/images/logos
# cd /usr/local/nagios/share/images/logos
use pngtogd2 tool or giftogd2 tools to convert it into gd2 format
# ls -al mine.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1536 Jan 24 12:24 mine.gif

# giftogd2 mine.gif mine.gd2 1536 1

backup old and replace with new logo
# cp nagios.gd2 nagios.gd2.old
# cp mine.gd2 nagios.gd2

Done.

14) Nagiosgraph

http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/19843.html provides good details
# cd /usr/local/
# tar -zxvf ~/downloads/nagiosgraph-0.9.0.tgz
read the INSTALL file carefully
you might need to create nagiosgraph.log and /var/spool/perfdata.log
and can manipulate the data like in serviceextinfo.cfg like:

define serviceextinfo {
service_description PING
hostgroup MYHOSTGROUP
notes_url show.cgi?host=$HOSTNAME$&service=$SERVICEDESC$&db=ping,losspct&db=ping,rta
icon_image graph.gif
icon_image_alt View graphs
}
so it gives a clearer picture by separating the data in 2 different graph

any problem refer here:
http://nagiosgraph.wiki.sourceforge.net/errors_and_troubleshooting

15) SMS Notification

download smstools and buy GSM Modem Wavecom 1306b

Now there's your car.

more...

less...

Installing rrdtool using yum

Between apt-get, up2date, yum or smart and a few more, which one is the best?. Actually I dont have favorite package manager. I just use whatever the server already has on board. If on Ubuntu, apt-get is more than enough. Right now I'm working on Centos 5 that need rrdtool package. By default, the yum repository configuration on Centos 5 does not have rrdtool in it. Thanks to dag wieers for his remarkable effort. Although he had some issue with yum developers previously. Nothing much I can help over there, so back to work.

Well, now create a file called dag.repo in /etc/yum.repos.d/ just like below

[root@yoebuntu yum.repos.d]# cat dag.repo
[dag]
name=Dag RPM Repository for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
baseurl=http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el$releasever/en/$basearch/dag
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/RPM-GPG-KEY.dag.txt
enabled=1
[root@yoebuntu yum.repos.d]#

and then
[root@yoebuntu yum.repos.d]# yum install rrdtool

reference

more...

less...

Note to self: Perl Module Installation using CPAN

First approach:
[root@svr rrdtool]# perl -MCPAN -e shell

cpan shell -- CPAN exploration and modules installation (v1.61)
ReadLine support available (try 'install Bundle::CPAN')

cpan> install Time::HiRes
CPAN: Storable loaded ok

Makefile:91: *** missing separator
then set the environment variable LC_ALL to "C" and retry
from scratch (re-run perl "Makefile.PL").
(And consider upgrading your Perl.)
(You got this message because you seem to have
an UTF-8 locale active in your shell environment, this used
to cause broken Makefiles to be created from Makefile.PLs.)
Makefile:91: *** missing separator. Stop.
Deng!


To search for module while in the shell:
cpan> i /HiRes/
Or if you know the exact name of the modules, can install it straight away:
[root@svr rrdtool]# perl -MCPAN -e install 'Time::HiRes'

To check the installed modules:
[root@svr4 nagios]# perl -e 'use Time::HiRes;'
Can't locate Time/HiRes.pm in @INC -- meaning the modules is not(yet) installed

For manual installation:
Go search for the module at here, then:

[root@svr rrdtool]wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/J/JH/JHI/Time-HiRes-1.9711.tar.gz
[root@svr rrdtool] tar -zxvf Time-HiRes-1.9711.tar.gz
[root@svr rrdtool] cd Time-HiRes-1.9711
[root@svr Time-HiRes-1.9711] perl Makefile.PL
[root@svr Time-HiRes-1.9711] make
[root@svr Time-HiRes-1.9711] make test
[root@svr Time-HiRes-1.9711] make install

Back to the error, google brought me to perl monks website

"RH9 caused more than a few problems for me with a number of modules until I edited my /etc/sysconfig/i18n file. Here's mine:

#LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LANG="en_US"
SUPPORTED="en_US.UTF-8:en_US:en"
SYSFONT="latarcyrheb-sun16"

It looks like some modules (like CPAN!) don't like that UTF-8. If you don't want to monkey with your system-wide locale setting, just type "export LANG=en_US" and then try your install again."

So i did just that.
Test the module again:
[root@svr4 Time-HiRes-1.9711]# perl -e 'use Time::HiRes;'
[root@svr4 Time-HiRes-1.9711]#

No error means the modules is there.

more...

less...

Half the man I used to be

Do you know that this year all muslim will be celebrating 2 Awal Muharram(Islamic New Year)? Yes, the first one will be on January 10th and the second one fall on December 29th. When talking about new year, everybody will start asking others on new year's resolution(if any). For me, every year(modern or islamic) I have set my new year's resolution, and it is often influenced from what had happened in the year before that.

I know i need to change, but in what area? A few weeks back, with the career-related issues, I somehow realize that I already changed. I'm too much focused on the outside, but unaware that the inside of me almost dried out. Yes, I'm off balanced, I'm lack of spiritual filling. My soul is hunger for knowledge.

I remembered that the most harmonious time in my life will be when I am 17 years old. Back then, commonly both my mind and my soul would be fed, resulting in "ketenangan jiwa and kemanisan iman". That's the catch I'm hoping for this year. Balance out the need for life without forgetting the after-life. First thing first, get rid of black dots in my heart. Then feed it with knowledge regularly. Perkenankanlah permintaan hambaMu ini ya Allah.

"Ya Tuhan kami, janganlah Engkau pesongkan hati kami, sesudah Engkau memberi petunjuk kepada kami, dan kurniakan kepada kami limpah rahmat dari sisiMu, sesungguhnya Engkaulah Tuhan yang melimpah-limpah pemberiannya. Amin."

more...

less...

Words of wisdom

Good judgement comes from the experience. Experience comes from bad judgement. - Jim Horning
EOT

more...

less...

Bee-sy

Busy like a bee. That's how I feel for since October, 2007. Since I'm becoming a Support Team Leader, so called. My major task is coordinating the team, other than attending to the meeting and some troubleshooting. In November alone, I attended 11 meeting/discussion, excluding informal discussion and sidewalk chats. So this is how the management see things. This is so different. This is so not me.

Most of the discussion/meeting are meant for Head of Unit or Head of Department role which are still vacant as of now. So automatically, most of the their tasks are falling right back at me. Now I consider my team and me is just like a bodyless and headless lizard tail, wiggling around(most of the times being played around by a cat, a very bad, idiotic cat).

I suppose I cannot be called a Sys Admin anymore. Thankfully I am wrong. My services still useful for some of the projects(I'm still exist so to speak). Sometimes I feel like being technically downgraded. Most of the time I feel like being used. I wonder if this what they called a middle-aged crisis or career crisis. But no matter what people called it, I hope I'll see a solution soon. Sorry for that is one heck of a nag. I'll buzz off for now.

Btw, have you watched that movie "Bee the movie". Its about how can a single individual can make difference in the world, hoping for something better, but turn out worse. I brought my 3 year-old son to the movie just to watch him took an 8 ringgit nap. More nagggging, less bloggging. Buzzz zzzZzZzzzzz

more...

less...

Better Things

Better Things lyric, heard from Marky Ramones and The Intruders. Well written, well sang..

Here’s wishing you the bluest skies
And hoping something better comes tomorrow
Hoping all the verses rhyme
And the very best of choruses to…
Follow all the doubt and sadness
I know that better things are on the way

Here’s hoping all the days ahead
Won’t be as bitter as the ones behind you
Be an optimist instead
And somehow happiness will find you
Forget what happened yesterday
I know that better things are on the way

It’s really good to see you rocking out
And having fun
Living like you just begun
Accept your life and what it brings
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things

Here’s wishing you the bluest skies
And hoping something better comes tomorrow
Hoping all the verses rhyme
And the very best of choruses to…

Follow all the doubt and sadness
I know that better things are on the way

I know you got a lotta good things
Happening up ahead
The fast is gone
It’s all been said
Here’s to what the future brings
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things
I hope tomorrow you’ll find better things

more...

less...

Large file support for Apache

I'm about to do some Linux installation on several PC. Somehow I just feel to do it via network. Since I've done it using NFS before, this time around http method will be used. The server running on Centos 4.4 already had httpd-2.0.52-28.ent.centos4 installed and already got fedora 6 DVD iso on my external hard drive. So everything's seemed to be in place, right? TTEEETTTT!

I'd uploaded the iso into /var/www/html/fc6 and start up the httpd daemon. Then, fire up firefox and put http://fileserver/fc6/ just to see an empty directory. Moreover, I got the 403 forbidden error when try to access the file directly. Check the error logs and see the the infamous error message
"[Thu Nov 01 14:18:58 2007] [error] [client 192.168.1.207 ] (75)Value too large for defined data type: access to /fc6/FC-6-i386-DVD.iso failed".
Asked google and get a few reference, something was missing in my installed apache so that it could not support any file bigger than 2GB.

OK, no big deal, just use yum to update. But the version suggested by yum is still did not have this feature supported. Next alternative, download a tarball from the the apache itself(version 2.0.61) and run ./configure. Deng!! no gcc installed. Thanks to yum update, the compiler is installed a few minutes later.

./configure, make && make install, went smoothly. But still the get the error messages. I first thought that the later version has automatically set this large file option, guess I was wrong. So google some more to find the required parameters.
Later, I reconfigure my apache using the flags as below:

[root@fileserv httpd-2.0.61]# CFLAGS="-D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64" ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/www

The file appeared in the browser and accessible. There goes the half day. Case closed. Got a DBA to meet.

more...

less...