
The NetMRG Reference

Brady Alleman

Douglas E. Warner

   Copyright © 2003-2006 Brady Alleman and Douglas E. Warner

   This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

   Permission  is  hereby  granted, free of charge, to any person
   obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files
   (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction,
   including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge,
   publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software,
   and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
   subject to the following conditions:

   The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
   included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

   THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
   EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
   MERCHANTABILITY,   FITNESS   FOR   A  PARTICULAR  PURPOSE  AND
   NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS
   BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN
   ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
   CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
   SOFTWARE.

   All product names are property of their respective owners. Such
   names  are  used  for identification purposes only and are not
   indicative  of endorsement by or of any company, organization,
   product, or platform.
     _________________________________________________________

   Table of Contents
   I. Overview

        1. Introduction
        2. Revision History

   II. Installation

        3. Software Requirements
        4. Satisfying Requirements
        5. Installation Procedure
        6. Upgrade Procedure

   III. Reference

        I. Manual Pages

              netmrg-gatherer -- Gathers data from devices.

   7. Contact Information

I. Overview

   Table of Contents
   1. Introduction
   2. Revision History
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 1. Introduction

   Welcome to NetMRG! NetMRG is a database-driven network monitoring
   and graphing tool for use on Linux systems. It offers an intuitive
   web-based configuration, customized monitoring capabilities for
   unusual situations, a fast multi-threaded polling application, and
   brilliant graphs rendered by RRDTOOL.

   This document aims to guide you swiftly through the installation and
   configuration of NetMRG, as well as act as a reference for those
   with existing installations.
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 2. Revision History

     * 0.19
       2006.02.03
       Major Feature Enhancements and Bug Fixes; Major Web Interface
       redesign to give more room for graphs and ease overall use.
       Security  enhancements behind the scenes to ensure correct
       permissions checking. Added a search interface that will search
       groups, devices, sub devies, and sub device parameters. RRDtool
       1.2 support (including graph smoothing); Depricated use of
       netmrg_cron.sh in favor of using netmrg-gatherer; migrated bulk
       of docs to wiki; numerous other bugfixes and enhancements.
     * 0.18.2
       2004.11.09
       Minor Bug Fixes; Fixed some escaping problems on the interface
       cache page, disabled the 'quickprint' Net-SNMP option for better
       compatibility, fixed the snmp-failure test, fixed an SVO-user
       view issue, and added failover for duplicate ifNames when adding
       interfaces.
     * 0.18.1
       2004.11.01
       Minor Bug Fixes; Fixed a small bug where the gatherer would not
       register negative values.
     * 0.18
       2004.10.25
       Major Bug Fixes; Fixed an issue preventing form submissions on
       some  browsers,  fixed PHP string escaping problems, fixed
       inability to create inverted stacked graphs, and fixed parameter
       substituion  and documentation regarding notifications and
       responses. Added better support on FreeBSDs (4.8-5.2) and x86-64
       architectures (Linux and FreeBSD), the ability to multiply
       summed values, MySQL timeouts, simple value parsing (to get the
       numeric content out of quoted numbers, etc), graphic icons for
       most actions, support for a default external auth user (with
       regards to permissions), and cleaned up the gatherer build
       process output.
     * 0.17
       2004.09.13
       Minor Feature Enhancements; Added colorized gatherer output,
       checkbox support on multiple pages, the ability to disable
       users, fixed a potential SQL-injection bug, updated navigation
       on group pages, updated tutorials.
     * 0.16
       2004.06.10
       Minor Bugfixes and Feature Enhancements; fixed a user management
       bug and several bugs related to 'single view only' users not
       being able to see graphs, added the ability to ignore SNMP
       uptime checks for devices (permitting the monitoring of broken
       devices), added the ability to do an SNMP walk of an OID (useful
       for the Windows SNMP agent), enhanced group/device management,
       cleaned up autoconf (now supports FC2), and added experimental
       syslog and daemon support in the gatherer.
     * 0.15
       2004.05.20
       Minor Bugfixes and Feature Enhancements; fixes for various db
       errors (including the infamous one on snmp_cache_view.php),
       better  cross-platform compilation, select all/none/invert
       checkbox support, support for choosing what graph to apply to an
       interface, better support for php < 4.2.0, and some security
       fixes for single-view-only users.
     * 0.14
       2004.03.10
       Minor Bugfixes and Feature Enhancements; escaping issues in
       template dereferencing, broken links on various pages, security
       issues regarding manual SNMP recaching, broken duplication on
       non-cutting-edge MySQL, more parameter substitution in SQL
       tests, better date parsing for advanced graph view, nav-bar and
       group navigation enhancements, advanced view capability for
       monitor-only graphs.
     * 0.13
       2003.12.19
       Minor Bugfixes and Feature Enhancements; slide show ordering,
       previous slide, resume slide show, better formatting of 'sums',
       errors on view editing, fixes to permissions checking, and an
       occassional segfault in the gatherer was fixed.
     * 0.12
       2003.12.15
       Major Feature Enhancents and Bugfixes; added SNMPv2 support,
       fixed a bug that would cause a device to be deleted from all
       groups, fixed session timeout when using external auth, added
       checkbox support to interface/disk cache pages, slide show
       enhancements, fixed permission issue where unauthorized users
       could view/edit test_* pages
     * 0.10
       2003.10.05
       Major bug fix; fixes a db error when trying to view monitors, a
       bug that would always set the width and height to zero when
       creating graphs, and makes conditions with 'rate of change'
       work. Many documentation upgrades.
     * 0.10pre2
       2003.09.15
       This release focuses on adding new features and sqaushing bugs.
       In addition, there is now an 'updater.php' that is required to
       be run between versions. A minor change needs to be made to
       everyone's 'netmrg.xml' to add an 'externalauth' field inside
       the 'website' section.
     * 0.10pre1
       2003.07.28
       Initial publication

II. Installation

   Table of Contents
   3. Software Requirements
   4. Satisfying Requirements
   5. Installation Procedure
   6. Upgrade Procedure
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 3. Software Requirements

   NetMRG Requires the following packages for compilation.

     * PHP, Version >= 4.1
     * MySQL, Version >= 3.23
     * RRDTOOL, Version >= 1.0.28
     * Libxml2, Version >= 2.30
     * Libstdc++, Version >= 3.2
       Versions  earlier than this may compile just fine, but may
       experience runtime issues. Specifically, we experienced software
       crashes  on  an SMP machine running version 2.96 that were
       resolved by upgrading to 3.2.
     * NET/UCD-SNMP, Version >= 4.2.2
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 4. Satisfying Requirements

   Specific instructions to satisfy dependencies for certain platforms
   are presented below. They should be used more as suggestions, not
   necessarily step-by-step instructions. You may need to do more than
   what is listed, or much less, depending on the options you selected
   when installing your operating system.

     * Red Hat Linux
          + In order to satisfy the libstdc++ requirement, Redhat 8.0
            or above is required. NetMRG may not be stable on older
            versions of libstdc++.
          + Install the following RPMs from your Red Hat installation
            media:
               o httpd
               o php
               o php-mysql
               o mysql
               o mysql-server
               o mysql-devel
               o libxml2
               o libxml2-devel
               o net-snmp
               o net-snmp-devel
               o net-snmp-utils
          + Installing RRDTOOL
               o Download an RRDTOOL RPM from http://www.freshrpms.net/
               o OR    Download    the    RRDTOOL   source   from
                 http://www.rrdtool.org/ and compile it.
          + Installing precompiled NetMRG RPM
            Download the latest NetMRG RPM and install it as follows:
$ rpm -Uvh netmrg-0.10.rpm
            You will still have to perform the following tasks listed
            in the Install Instructions:
               o Setup the Database
               o Configure Apache
               o Configure the Installation
               o Setup Crontab
     * FreeBSD (4.8)
          + Install the following ports:
               o www/apache13
               o rrdtool
               o net-snmp
               o libxml2
               o mod_php4 (specify MySQL support)
               o lang/gcc32
          + Run configure, specifying gcc32:
./configure 'LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/gcc3/lib' 'CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/gcc3
/include' 'CXX=g++32'
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 5. Installation Procedure

    1. Untar  to  some directory like /tmp/ (it will untar into a
       'netmrg' directory)
cd /tmp
wget http://www.netmrg.net/download/release/netmrg.tar.gz
tar xzvf netmrg.tar.gz
    2. Now we need to compile and install the source. cd into the
       directory made by your tar command and type the following:
./configure
make
make install

     Note: If configure fails to locate the needed libraries they can
     be manually specified. Run ./configure --help for details on the
     necessary options.
    3. Setup the database
       Now we need to setup the database. Please change at least the
       password (netmrgpass below).
mysqladmin create netmrg
mysql -u root -p netmrg < share/netmrg.mysql
mysql -u root -p
> grant all on netmrg.* to netmrguser@localhost identified by 'netmrgpa
ss';
    4. You need to modify your apache config in order to make your
       NetMRG installation live (commonly in
       /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf).
       The first is to alias /netmrg to the installed web directory
       (commonly /usr/local/var/www/netmrg/webfiles).
Alias /netmrg "/usr/local/var/www/netmrg/webfiles"
       The easier way (if you're running Apache >= 1.3) is to just
       Include the conf file we've created anywhere in your file (near
       the bottom is fine).
Include /usr/local/etc/netmrg.conf
       You  will  need to restart your Apache after making config
       changes. Telling it to reload its config should be good enough
killall -HUP httpd
    5. Configure the Installation
       All of NetMRG's common configuration options are controlled by
       an XML file, normally located at /usr/local/etc/netmrg.xml. You
       should edit this file to make any necessary changes before
       continuing with installation.
       For  most  installations,  you  will at least need to edit
       netmrg.xml to reflect your database username and password.
    6. Setup Permissions
       NetMRG does not need superuser permissions to run, therefore we
       will setup a user for it.
# useradd netmrg
# chown netmrg:netmrg /usr/local/var/log/netmrg
# chown netmrg:netmrg /usr/local/var/lib/netmrg/rrd
    7. Setup crontab
       You can setup the crontab entries in two places: either edit
       /etc/crontab, or run crontab -e as the netmrg user. For 'crontab
       -e', use an entry similar to this:
*/5 * * * * bash -c "if [ -f /usr/local/var/lock/subsys/netmrg ]; then
/usr/local/bin/netmrg-gatherer; fi"
       To edit the master crontab, edit /etc/crontab and add a line
       similar to this:
*/5 * * * * netmrg bash -c "if [ -f /usr/local/var/lock/subsys/netmrg ]
; then /usr/local/bin/netmrg-gatherer; fi"
    8. Point your web browser at your install, and start graphing
       things! The default login is admin and the default password is
       nimda. Point your web browser at the host you built this on
       (something similar to http://yourhost.com/netmrg/) and please
       change your password!
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 6. Upgrade Procedure

   After  doing  a  'make install' as described in the chapter on
   Installing NetMRG, the next step is to run the web-based updater.
   This is accomplished by logging into NetMRG with administrator
   privileges, and following the prompts. NetMRG's web interface will
   not  operate  normally and the gatherer will not run until the
   web-based upgrade is performed. Non-administrator users will only
   receive  a  message  directing  them  to  contact their NetMRG
   administrator.

   If you need to perform an upgrade, the updater will prompt you to
   apply all updates. Clicking this link will perform all necessary
   updates for this release.

   If for some reason an update fails, or you would like to re-apply an
   update for any reason, you can goto the updater and goto View all
   available updates. This will present you a list of the updates that
   are available and their status (applied, not applied, or error). If
   you have problems updating from one version to the next, you can
   force  individual updates that fail so that they're considered
   'applied'. Once all updates are applied for a particular version,
   the database will be automatically updated to the latest version
   that has all updates applied.

III. Reference

   Table of Contents
   I. Manual Pages

I. Manual Pages

   Table of Contents
   netmrg-gatherer -- Gathers data from devices.

netmrg-gatherer

Name

   netmrg-gatherer -- Gathers data from devices.

Synopsis

   netmrg-gatherer [OPTIONS]

Description

   netmrg-gatherer performs tests on all enabled hosts in NetMRG. It
   will store results in RRD files using RRDTOOL(1) and perform actions
   in response to events.

Global Options

   -h

          Displays usage information and exits.

   -v

          Displays software version and exits.

Operating Options

   -t num threads

          Run  no  more  than  the  specified  number  of threads
          simultaneously.

   -X

          Become a daemon.

   -M mode

          Mode of operation. This option controls the manner in which
          the gatherer operates. The modes currently supported are
          "once" (the default, best used manually or via cron) which
          runs all tests once then exits, and "wait" (best used when
          daemonized) which will run all tests, wait for the gatherer
          interval to expire, and then repeat.

     Note: To run netmrg-gatherer daemonized, the recommended set of
     options at this point is "-X -S -M wait" which will daemonize,
     repeat the gather cycle on each interval, and write output to
     syslog.

Logging, Debugging and Verbosity Options

   -S

          Syslog. Logs messages to syslog instead of stdout.

   -b

          Bland. Disables color output. By default, netmrg-gatherer
          will display color output when connected to a terminal, but
          will use bland output when its output is written to a file.
          This  option  should  only be needed when the detection
          mechanism has failed, or the user doesn't want to see colors
          when running the program by hand.

   -a

          All. Displays all log messages.

   -m

          Most. Displays more messages than default.

   -q

          Quiet. Silences all output.

   -l level mask

          Only outputs messages that match the specified level mask.

   -c component mask

          Only outputs messages that match the specified component
          mask.

   -s

          Safe.  Tries  to  keep sensitive information out of the
          displayed messages.

Configuration File Options

   -C config file

          Uses the specified XML configuration file.

   -K config file

          Parses the specified XML configuration file and exits.

Database Options

   -H host

          Uses the specified host name for connecting to the database.

   -D database

          Uses the specified database name.

   -u user name

          Uses the specified user name for connecting to the database.

   -p [password]

          Uses the specified password for connecting to the database.
          If no password is specified, the user is prompted to enter
          one.

Recaching Options

   -i device id

          Performs an interface recache on the specified device.

   -d device id

          Performs a disk recache on the specified device.

     Note: Recaching options are intended for use by the web interface.
     These options should not be generally used by end users.
     _________________________________________________________

Chapter 7. Contact Information

   We have great aspirations for what NetMRG could become, but as with
   all open-source software, such aspriations can only be achieved with
   the active participation of the open-source community. Please do
   your part and support software that you use by helping to answer
   support questions on forums and report bugs to developers. Thanks!

     * Main Website - http://www.netmrg.net/
     * Online Docs- http://wiki.netmrg.net/
     * Support Forum - http://lists.netmrg.net/
     * Bug Reporting and Tracking - http://bugs.netmrg.net/
