On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Charles Sprickman wrote:
> I think what's happened is that development is pretty much at a
> standstill. I'm not saying "Dammit Vikas! Get this thing going again!",
> just observing...
I also do not want to be critical as I've grabbed other pieces from NOCOL
in making my own system. I'd rather say "Thank-you Vikas".
> Anyhow, in our case we're running a few versions behind current, and the
> local mods are so heavy I couldn't even imagine upgrading. In talking to
> other people that use Nocol, I've found the same thing. The changes are
> broad and somewhat hackish, but they work, and have the side-effect of
> locking you into what you've got.
There were always tweaks I had to put in to get nocol to work the way I
wanted too.
> I think there are a few things that would make a new nocol better would
> be:
>
> -drop the 'hostmon' perl client and use something like ucd-snmp to gather
> host stats. Include any extra agent functions that don't come with it but
> are useful.
> -db support really seems like a wonderful idea. Don't forget something to
> check that your db is responding as expected.
> -more snmp monitoring stuff, with configs for common equipment
> -since you're already looking at the status of interfaces, why not get a
> count and add a mrtg-like (but dynamically generate) usage graph for the
> interfaces.
> -hostmon-like alarms on interfaces when a threshold is reached.
> -standardize on one pager package to allow for easier 'out of the box'
> setup. Qpage has been great for us (www.qpage.org).
The database idea is indeed a good one and I'll have to think about it for
my package remstats.
> That's all. The database idea is wonderful...
>
> Charles
>
> --
> =-----------------= =
> | Charles Sprickman Internet Channel |
> | INCH System Administration Team (212)243-5200 |
> | spork@inch.com access@inch.com |
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>
> On Wed, 13 Oct 1999, Velocet wrote:
>
> > then Roger Burton West's all..
> > >
> > > On or about Tue, Oct 12, 1999 at 03:06:43PM -0400, Jonathan A. Zdziarski typed:
> > > >lots of folks have switched to the commercial software 'netcool' which
> > > >runs about $100,000 or so. it's much nicer, but obviously nocol has its
> > > >own value in being free.
> > >
> > > "Much nicer" is an interesting way of putting it. "A total waste of
> > > money" would be more accurate - the probes don't work, all the IP-
> > > based probes _insist on_ DNS rather than IP numbers - so useful if
> > > your nameserver falls over, all of a sudden all the probes fail -
> > > and you need a high-end system to run it on.
> > >
> > > I've looked at a lot of different monitoring packages, and they're
> > > all horribly expensive (or freeware). I haven't yet seen one that
> > > worked as well as NOCOL.
> >
> > If nocol is so good, why is the support so lacking? Or am I just blind?
> > Is there activity on this list beyond people jsut trying to get things
> > going and a few helpful people who maintain their monitors diligently
> > while the core package gets more and more outdated? Is there an effort
> > to release a new version or add some of the features I and 100 other people
> > are looking for?
> >
> > Is someone attempting to kick start it? Are the original author(s) still
> > working on it, or will it be taken over (or worse, will a code fork be
> > the only thing to kickstart the authors, resulting in two development
> > paths)?
> >
> > > >> Has anyone got nocol doing hierarchical conditions, so that when a link
> > > >> is down you dont also get paged with SMTP, Web, Pop, Imap, Ftp and everything
> > > >> else being down too?
> > >
> > > No... but on the other hand I have got a once-every-five-minutes cron
> > > job that tells me all the system status changes in that time.
> >
> > Hmm. I wonder if we can fit these messages into a single 100 char alpha
> > page. ;) This seems to be the way to go with paging - collect all
> > information until some cutoff time (every 5 min) and then send a page
> > of distilled most-critical information.
> >
> > You got this pager interface code handy?
> >
> > Does anyone have a nice generic paging scheduler with easy to setup
> > weekly schedules for people on call?
> >
> > /kc
> >
>
>
--
"Life is much too important to be taken seriously."
Thomas Erskine <thomas.erskine-dated-sig@crc.ca> (613) 998-2836
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