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. ----------------------------------------------------------------- mon.cgi v.1.52 21-May-2001 by Andrew Ryan <andrewr@nam-shub.com> 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/ ----------------------------------------------------------------- This is the latest stable version of mon.cgi, meant to be used only with mon 0.38-21 and above, and a version of Mon::Client that is 0.11 or higher. The chief reason that you will need the new version is for the "test config" functionality. This release has 4 new features of note: 1) Access control. Using the 'watch' keyword in the config file, you can restrict access to a particular configuration on a per-hostgroup basis. 'watch' keywords can be regular expressions. Original idea and keyword name stolen from monshow :) 2) 'watch' keywords can either be implemented "softly" -- by default only certain hostgroups are shown, but all can be accessed -- or "strictly" -- only the hostgroups explicitly allowed by 'watch' keywords can be accessed in any way. Using strict access control, an organization using mon to watch systems belonging to multiple customers to be able to segregate those different customers' monitoring completely. 3) There's now a login button. The people have spoken! 4) mon.cgi now checks for the proper version of Mon::Client before it starts. This was a major support problem. Plus many other bug fixes and small improvements, as usual. This release should be considered stable until proven otherwise :) Please see the CHANGES file for more information about this release. Thanks to all who report bugs, submit patches, and give feedback. Andrew Ryan <andrewr@nam-shub.com> 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. SITE CUSTOMIZATION ------------------ mon.cgi has always been "customizable," in that the source was available and you were encouraged to substitute your own parameters (e.g., mon host, mon port, company logo, etc.). But this meant that with each new version, you had to go back and re-edit the source code. Not a big deal, but still something of a pain. As of v1.49, mon.cgi includes some features which are meant to facilitate these changes and make site-specific customizations easier to perform, especially as mon and mon.cgi continue to evolve. Creating Your Own Config File ----------------------------- Previous to v.1.49 of mon.cgi, you could customize the look of the page, but all customizations had to be done in the source itself. This has numerous disadvantages, so 1.49 introduces an *optional* config file which will be read only as necessary and will allow you to specify custom values for parameters without having to touch the source code each time. You can still edit the source each time if you want, but if you want to set up a config file, follow these steps: 1) Copy the config file (included with the mon.cgi distribution) config/mon.cgi.cf to a location of your choice. It's best to start with a sample config file, because the config file format is very simple, and it will give you a chance to see how it works and experiment with parameters. 2) Edit the mon.cgi source code to find the line that specifies the variable "$moncgi_config_file". Change the value to the filesystem path of your copy of your mon.cgi config file. 3) Now you can edit the config file and make changes at will. Every time you change the mtime of the file (e.g., by saving it in a text editor, or touch'ing the file), mon.cgi will re-read the config file and the changes will take effect. If there are errors in parsing the config file, they will go to STDERR, which in most setups will end up in your web server's error log. Look in the errors file if your config isn't working like you expect it to work. Adding A New Row And Custom Commands To The Command Button Bar -------------------------------------------------------------- Adding a new row to the command button bar, with corresponding custom commands, is quite a bit more involved than the relatively simple matter of changing a config file. If you've developed, or are interested in developing your own custom commands, however, this functionality might be just what you needed. In the following example, we add a command called "ack_all" to the button bar, and also add the routine to do the ack'ing. The actual guts of the ack_all routine aren't included, but the goal of these instructions is to give you enough to start off. The first step is to create your own moncgi_custom_print_bar function. A stub function exists in the mon.cgi code, and the below code shows you how you would put in your own function that has one button, labeled "Acknowledge All Failures". Sample moncgi_custom_print_bar subroutine: sub moncgi_custom_print_bar { # # This is a sample routine, which adds a third row to the # command table, with one command: "Acknowledge All Failures" # my ($face)= (@_); $webpage->print("<tr>\n"); $webpage->print("\t<td colspan=7 align=center><font FACE=\"$face\"><a href=$url?${monhost_and_port_args}command=ack_all>Acknowledge All Failures</a></font></td>\n"); $webpage->print("</tr>\n"); } The next step is to tell mon.cgi that you are using your own custom commands, by creating your own moncgi_custom_commands subroutine. Again, there is a sample function in the mon.cgi code which you can replace with your own. Sample moncgi_custom_commands subroutine: sub moncgi_custom_commands { if ($command eq "ack_all") { # # Set up the page # &setup_page("Acknowledge All Alarms"); # # Note: you would have to write the "ack all" # command yourself! &moncgi_ack_all; } else { # # We didn't find anything, return # return 0; } return 1; # we did find something, suppress further command processing } The last step is to create the actual subroutines which will do the custom work you want them to do (assuming you weren't just calling existing commands in a different way. In our example, this means we have to write a function that actually goes out and acks all existing failures. We won't do this here, but hopefully this gives you an idea of how to proceed. sub moncgi_ack_all { # # Here is where the actual code to do the "ack all" would go # } When future releases of mon.cgi come out, you can copy and paste your custom subroutines and be up and running with the new version in minimal time. At least, that is what this was designed for. 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@arctic.org>. 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.