# Network watchdogs

## Jesore

For the servers of our company, some inhouse, some outside, I want to set up some soft of a watchdog that runs regular tests wether all services still run and produce correct results. The last part is very important to me because of bad experience. The hoster of our DNS stuff made some minor "restructuring" which resulted in changed IPs of all out mail server A reccords. So for two days all our customers got their mails bumped. That's why I'd like to be able to question for example the DNS for specific records and check, wether they produce correct results. 

I've had a look at several pieces of software already, but there is quite a lot out there. So I'd like to benefit from the experience around here.   :Smile: 

The features I want are the following:

 - Regular automatic checking of servers, daemons and functionality.

 - Email (sms for wortst case would be ideal) warnings if sth goes wrong.

 - A web frontend would be nice, but not crucial. 

Any experience with services like that?

Jesore

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## think4urs11

We use Mon for these tasks

```
*  app-admin/mon

      Latest version available: 0.99.2-r1

      Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]

      Size of downloaded files: 132 kB

      Homepage:    http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/

      Description: highly configurable service monitoring daemon

      License:     GPL-2

```

HTH

T.

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## Jesore

Mon is one of those I already had a short look at. It looks promising. Any other suggestions?

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## Jesore

Does anyone have experience with this software?

http://argus.tcp4me.com/

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## makoomba

i use nagios - http://www.nagios.org/screenshot.php

it has all the features you are looking for + alert history, trend analysis, etc.

this is a mail alert for a temporary failure of my internal dns due to a line problem.

```
***** Nagios 1.0 *****

Notification Type: PROBLEM

Service: dnscache

Host: Firewall

Address: 10.0.1.1

State: CRITICAL

Date/Time: Tue Jul 20 06:24:18 CEST 2004

Additional Info:

CRITICAL - Plugin timed out after 10 seconds

```

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## zbindere

did you check out bigbrother?

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## Jesore

How hard is it to learn nagios? It can do so much I suspect a config beast behind it - and I have very little time atm. Can it check for expected answers, too? Like my example in the first post - a specific IP should be returned on querying a DNS-server. 

Btw, thanks for all your answers.

Jesore

 *makoomba wrote:*   

> i use nagios - http://www.nagios.org/screenshot.php
> 
> it has all the features you are looking for + alert history, trend analysis, etc.
> 
> this is a mail alert for a temporary failure of my internal dns due to a line problem.
> ...

 

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## makoomba

 *Jesore wrote:*   

> Can it check for expected answers, too? Like my example in the first post - a specific IP should be returned on querying a DNS-server. 

 nagios has a lot of plugins, most are simple 10-lines perl script so, if u can't find a "just ready" solution, it's easy to pick up and modify a plugin to suit your needs.

 *Jesore wrote:*   

> How hard is it to learn nagios? It can do so much I suspect a config beast behind it - and I have very little time atm

 you are right: it takes some time to fully understand host/services configuration, alert groups etc, so don't expect to just install it and go.

btw, there is a webmin plugin that can help, something like nagmin.

EDIT:

i just checked check_dns plugin:

```

Usage: check_dns -H host [-s server] [-a expected-address] [-t timeout]

```

this is what you need, right ?   :Wink: 

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## Jesore

 *makoomba wrote:*   

> btw, there is a webmin plugin that can help, something like nagmin.

 

*Shudder* I don't ... like webmin.  :Shocked: 

 *makoomba wrote:*   

> i just checked check_dns plugin:
> 
> ```
> 
> Usage: check_dns -H host [-s server] [-a expected-address] [-t timeout]
> ...

 

Exactly, Nagios does really sound promising. I already have a working test setup of argus and mon, though. If I get nagios working in under two hours (basic functionality), I'll take it. I have to wait for some 'dd' images to finish before I can go home, anyway. 

Jesore

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## banzoo

Could you say, what was your last choice and why.

Looking for same thing.

thnks

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## gnuageux

Nagios is great. I use nagios to manage montior multiple services on several networks. The thing I like about Nagios is you can define your own service checks / alarms. For instance rather than alarming on slow pings you can define slow ping as a check that will not alarm, but warn.  :Smile: 

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## Janne Pikkarainen

Nagios truly is great. And with a bit of creative scripting you can even make it send alarms to some unusual destinations, such as irc or icq.

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## Jesore

For the moment I chose argus http://www.tcp4me.com/code/argus/ as it is relatively simple to set up, has a nice clean web interface (if everything is ok you'll see that in a second - green) and has all the features I need. Besides - till now it seems quite stable as far as I can tell from several days. On the long run I might read myself into nagios, but atm I need only a tiny percentage of all it's features and I'm short on time.

Jesore 

P.S. Sorry for not answering earlier but I was sick - technically I still am, but who has the time to be sick   :Rolling Eyes: 

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## dgtaro

 *Jesore wrote:*   

> For the moment I chose argus http://www.tcp4me.com/code/argus/ as it is relatively simple to set up, has a nice clean web interface (if everything is ok you'll see that in a second - green) and has all the features I need. Besides - till now it seems quite stable as far as I can tell from several days. On the long run I might read myself into nagios, but atm I need only a tiny percentage of all it's features and I'm short on time.
> 
> Jesore 
> 
> P.S. Sorry for not answering earlier but I was sick - technically I still am, but who has the time to be sick  

 

It's good to see you are having great results with Argus. I am on a mission to sort out my network management tools also, and Time is what I don't have. 

What version are you using? I guess I want to know your Pros and Cons for the software   :Wink: 

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## Skorgu

Is there an argus ebuild that I'm missing? The ebuild in portage that says 'argus' is a completely different program. Did you build from source or am I blind?

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