[Commotion-dev] zabbix / commotion data

Wed Apr 17 22:09:01 UTC 2013

What priority would you place on retrieving live monitoring data from nodes
vs serving the nodes' clients?  Tools like zabbix and nagios do require CPU
and RAM resources, along with flash space.  Indeed, here are the sizes for
packages like these, compiled as modules in the current DR1 build tree:

-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben  177487 Apr 17 15:05 monit_5.4-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben  173397 Apr 17 15:06 monit-nossl_5.4-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben    6449 Apr 17 15:07 muninlite_1.0.4-3_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben 1841543 Apr 17 15:31 nagios_2.10-2_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben  481818 Apr 17 16:27 nagios-plugins_1.4.14-3_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben   78106 Apr 17 16:30 zabbix-agent_2.0.0-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben   90552 Apr 17 16:30 zabbix-agentd_2.0.0-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben   36824 Apr 17 16:30 zabbix-get_2.0.0-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben  228245 Apr 17 16:30 zabbix-proxy_2.0.0-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben   42211 Apr 17 16:30 zabbix-sender_2.0.0-1_ar71xx.ipk
-rw-r--r-- 1 ben ben   62865 Apr 17 15:07 xinetd_2.3.15-1_ar71xx.ipk

Also, OpenWRT by default doesn't support CPU task scheduling, a la the
'nice' tool, for ar71xx platform.  Meaning these tools would be running at
the same CPU priotity as wpa_supplicant, dnsmasq, etc.  But, if you want
to, it is config option BUSYBOX_CONFIG_RENICE.

Besides that, I've been curious about how useful the 'muninlite' package
could be for this sort of use case.  It implements the munin protocol for
collecting/sending monitoring data just in shell script, meaning the
on-board copy of busybox can execute it.  And I'm assuming it to be
extensible roughly in the same way one can write custom munin plugins.  The
downside, tho, is that muninlite does require the xinetd package.

On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 4:38 AM, Dan Staples <
danstaples at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:

> Moving this discussion to the Commotion dev list, as Will's explanation of
> his Zabbix setup is generally relevant to ongoing development.
>
> Will, do you know what types of APIs Zabbix provides? If it is available
> via JSON or some easily parsable format, it could be super useful for a
> network dashboard.
>
> On 04/17/2013 01:06 AM, Will Hawkins wrote:
>
>> Should be possible, yes! I can imagine looking that up based on mac
>> address or device name (both things that the dhcp server can "see").
>>
>> Will
>>
>> On 04/16/2013 07:05 PM, Georgia Bullen wrote:
>>
>>> It does! Thanks!
>>>
>>> One thing we were wondering about is if we can get a sense of device
>>> types that are connected to various nodes? I.e. android, iphone, ipod,
>>> laptop, desktop, etc. Is that possible?
>>>
>>> -Georgia
>>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Will Hawkins
>>> <hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.**org <hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.org><mailto:
>>> hawkinsw@**opentechinstitute.org <hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.org>>>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>      At the moment, *nothing* is being collected. We are working through
>>> some
>>>      issues with our server infrastructure that are holding us up. :-(
>>> Nat
>>>      should have the server issues corrected sometime tomorrow and I can
>>>      actually start collecting the data.
>>>
>>>      As a quick and dirty base install, I am using a "template" on the
>>> nodes
>>>      that treats them like UNIX machines. This template will collect
>>>      information about system state (like CPU usage, disk usage, network
>>>      throughput, etc). There are other customizable templates for OpenWRT
>>>      that I am investigating as well. These should give us some specific
>>>      collection of wireless "stuff". I don't know much about that yet.
>>>      Ideally we will also create templates that collect information about
>>>      olsrd, wireless signal quality, etc.
>>>
>>>      All the data that is collected can be set up to trigger certain
>>> actions.
>>>      When a data point goes beyond a boundary, someone can get an email,
>>> for
>>>      example.
>>>
>>>      I hope that this gives you some idea of what we are going for
>>>      (preposition at the end of the sentence!).
>>>
>>>      Will
>>>
>>>      On 04/16/2013 06:55 PM, Georgia Bullen wrote:
>>>      > Hey Will!
>>>      >
>>>      > I was talking with some of the field team, and mentioned the data
>>>      > collection that you've got working with Zabbix! We were wondering
>>>      if you
>>>      > could tell us what types of data points are being logged at the
>>>      moment?
>>>      >
>>>      > Thanks!
>>>      >
>>>      > -Georgia
>>>      >
>>>      > --
>>>      > Georgia Bullen
>>>      > Field Operations Technologist, Open Technology Institute
>>>      > <http://oti.newamerica.net/>
>>>      > New America Foundation
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Georgia Bullen
>>> Field Operations Technologist, Open Technology Institute
>>> <http://oti.newamerica.net/>
>>> New America Foundation
>>>
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>>
>
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-- 
Ben West
http://gowasabi.net
ben at gowasabi.net
314-246-9434
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