Introduction to mon.cgi -------------------------------------------------------- This interface, along with mon itself, is available from ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/ Development versions of mon.cgi can be found at http://www.nam-shub.com/files/ -------------------------------------------------------- mon.cgi is a web-based GUI for mon. Its purpose is twofold: 1) To provide an easy-to-read visual display of all the status items that mon keeps track of, and 2) To provide an easy-to-use web administration interface to allow users to perform all mon administration tasks from any web browser. This package and the documentation assumes that you have at least a basic familiarity with mon. Installing mon.cgi ------------------ Instructions for installing mon.cgi are located in the header of the mon.cgi file itself. Roughly speaking, the order of events is: 1) Install mon and get it working, set up monpasswd and auth.cf files and get them verifiably working if you're using mon.cgi authentication (hint: you should be!). 2) Install a web server, preferably Apache, and preferably with mod_perl built in. Start the web server and verify that it works. 3) Put mon.cgi in your cgi-bin directory and make sure it is executable by the apache user (make it 0755 or 0555). 4) Edit your mon.cgi file to change default values to match your environment (e.g. contact email, your company logo, your company name, etc.). 5) If you're requiring users to log in (highly recommended), you must change the default app secret variable $app_secret in your copy of mon.cgi, and install the Crypt::TripleDES module from CPAN on the machine which will be running mon.cgi. 6) If you want to easily customize the look and feel of mon.cgi, as well as various other configuration options, copy the sample mon.cgi.cf file (in the /config directory of this distribution) into a location where your webserver can read it, and edit the line beginning '$moncgi_config_file = ""' to reflect the path to your config file. You can then change the look and feel of mon.cgi, as well as implement access controls, directly from this file. mon.cgi Design Goals -------------------- 1) Provide 100% of the functionality of mon in a graphical user interface. Ideally, there will be some things that the GUI is better for, and inevitably, some things that the command line will always win out for. 2) Maintain 100% compatibility with mon and Mon::Client. If a patch to mon or Mon::Client is required to get a piece of mon.cgi functionality working, we write it, submit it, and get it folded in to the main distribution before making it official in mon.cgi. 3) Expose mon to the largest number of people possible in the most useful way. It is the author's belief that mon is a very useful piece of monitoring software, and it is also my belief that the best way to insure the growth and support of this software is to expose it to a large number of people in your organization in a way that will cause them to reach the same conclusion. A web client is the most universal way to achieve this goal at the present time, as a web client can be run on any network that mon would be. 4) Simplicity and lightness. In other words: Compatibility on a large number of client browser sizes, versions, and resolutions; No frames! ; Adhering to as many of the standard good usability conventions as possible ; Keeping mon.cgi all one file, with a very short setup time ; No special modules required past those needed to run mon, and optional additional modules kept to a minimum ; 100% text browser compatibility ; Performance and speed ; Low resource utilization. Sometimes these design goals work against one another, but hopefully we come out ahead when tradeoffs are made. Alternatives to mon.cgi ----------------------- If you don't like mon.cgi but you would still like a web GUI, you have 2 alternatives. Your first alternative is Jim's monshow, which ships with mon in the clients/ subdirectory of the mon distribution. The second alternative is Gilles Lamiral's Minotaure, which can be found at ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/admin/mon/contrib/. Both of these are fully functional and may suit your needs better than mon.cgi. You are encouraged to take a look at them both and decide which is best for you. Credits ------- The current maintainer is Andrew Ryan <andrewr@nam-shub.com>. Report all bugs to him or the mon users mailing list. + Originally by: Arthur K. Chan <artchan@althem.com> + Based on the Mon program by Jim Trocki <trockij@transmeta.com>. http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/ + Rewritten to support Mon::Client, mod_perl, taint mode, authentication, the strict pragma, and other visual/functional enhancements by Andrew Ryan <andrewr@nam-shub.com>. + Downtime logging contributed by Martha H Greenberg <marthag@mit.edu> + Site customization extensions by Ed Ravin <eravin@panix.com> + The contributions of members of the mon-users mailing list have been invaluable in many ways.
