One of the new features in the next Debian/Lenny based release of
Debian Edu/Skolelinux, which is scheduled for release in the next few
days, is automatic configuration of the service monitoring system
Nagios. The previous release had automatic configuration of trend
analysis using Munin, and this Lenny based release take that a step
further.
When installing a Debian Edu Main-server, it is automatically
configured as a Munin and Nagios server. In addition, it is
configured to be a server for the
SiteSummary
system I have written for use in Debian Edu. The SiteSummary
system is inspired by a system used by the University of Oslo where I
work. In short, the system provide a centralised collector of
information about the computers on the network, and a client on each
computer submitting information to this collector. This allow for
automatic information on which packages are installed on each machine,
which kernel the machines are using, what kind of configuration the
packages got etc. This also allow us to automatically generate Munin
and Nagios configuration.
All computers reporting to the sitesummary collector with the
munin-node package installed is automatically enabled as a Munin
client and graphs from the statistics collected from that machine show
up automatically on http://www/munin/ on the Main-server.
All non-laptop computers reporting to the sitesummary collector are
automatically monitored for network presence (ping and any network
services detected). In addition, all computers (also laptops) with
the nagios-nrpe-server package installed and configured the way
sitesummary would configure it, are monitored for full disks, software
raid status, swap free and other checks that need to run locally on
the machine.
The result is that the administrator on a school using Debian Edu
based on Lenny will be able to check the health of his installation
with one look at the Nagios settings, without having to spend any time
keeping the Nagios configuration up-to-date.
The only configuration one need to do to get Nagios up and running
is to set the password used to get access via HTTP. The system
administrator need to run "htpasswd /etc/nagios3/htpasswd.users
nagiosadmin" to create a nagiosadmin user and set a password for
it to be able to log into the Nagios web pages. After that,
everything is taken care of.
