Provided by: xymon_4.3.7-1ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
analysis.cfg - Configuration file for the xymond_client module
SYNOPSIS
~Xymon/server/etc/analysis.cfg
DESCRIPTION
The analysis.cfg file controls what color is assigned to the status-messages that are
generated from the Xymon client data - typically the cpu, disk, memory, procs- and msgs-
columns. Color is decided on the basis of some settings defined in this file; settings
apply to specific hosts through a set of rules.
Note: This file is only used on the Xymon server - it is not used by the Xymon client, so
there is no need to distribute it to your client systems.
FILE FORMAT
Blank lines and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are treated as comments and ignored.
CPU STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
LOAD warnlevel paniclevel
If the system load exceeds "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the "cpu" status will go yellow or
red, respectively. These are decimal numbers.
Defaults: warnlevel=5.0, paniclevel=10.0
UP bootlimit toolonglimit [color]
The cpu status goes yellow/red if the system has been up for less than "bootlimit" time,
or longer than "toolonglimit". The time is in minutes, or you can add h/d/w for
hours/days/weeks - eg. "2h" for two hours, or "4w" for 4 weeks.
Defaults: bootlimit=1h, toolonglimit=-1 (infinite), color=yellow.
CLOCK max.offset [color]
The cpu status goes yellow/red if the system clock on the client differs more than
"max.offset" seconds from that of the Xymon server. Note that this is not a particularly
accurate test, since it is affected by network delays between the client and the server,
and the load on both systems. You should therefore not rely on this being accurate to more
than +/- 5 seconds, but it will let you catch a client clock that goes completely wrong.
The default is NOT to check the system clock.
NOTE: Correct operation of this test obviously requires that the system clock of the Xymon
server is correct. You should therefore make sure that the Xymon server is synchronized to
the real clock, e.g. by using NTP.
Example: Go yellow if the load average exceeds 5, and red if it exceeds 10. Also, go
yellow for 10 minutes after a reboot, and after 4 weeks uptime. Finally, check that the
system clock is at most 15 seconds offset from the clock of the Xymon system and go red if
that is exceeded.
LOAD 5 10
UP 10m 4w yellow
CLOCK 15 red
DISK STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
DISK filesystem warnlevel paniclevel
DISK filesystem IGNORE
INODE filesystem warnlevel paniclevel
INODE filesystem IGNORE
If the utilization of "filesystem" is reported to exceed "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the
"disk" status will go yellow or red, respectively. "warnlevel" and "paniclevel" are
either the percentage used, or the space available as reported by the local "df" command
on the host. For the latter type of check, the "warnlevel" must be followed by the letter
"U", e.g. "1024U".
The special keyword "IGNORE" causes this filesystem to be ignored completely, i.e. it will
not appear in the "disk" status column and it will not be tracked in a graph. This is
useful for e.g. removable devices, backup-disks and similar hardware.
"filesystem" is the mount-point where the filesystem is mounted, e.g. "/usr" or "/home".
A filesystem-name that begins with "%" is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular
expression; e.g. "%^/oracle.*/" will match any filesystem whose mountpoint begins with
"/oracle".
"INODE" works identical to "DISK", but uses the count of i-nodes in the filesystem instead
of the amount of disk space. This requires a 4.3.x or later Xymon client.
Defaults DISK: warnlevel=90%, paniclevel=95% Defaults INODE: warnlevel=70%,
paniclevel=90%
MEMORY STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
MEMPHYS warnlevel paniclevel
MEMACT warnlevel paniclevel
MEMSWAP warnlevel paniclevel
If the memory utilization exceeds the "warnlevel" or "paniclevel", the "memory" status
will change to yellow or red, respectively. Note: The words "PHYS", "ACT" and "SWAP" are
also recognized.
Example: Go yellow if more than 20% swap is used, and red if more than 40% swap is used or
the actual memory utilisation exceeds 90%. Don't alert on physical memory usage.
MEMSWAP 20 40
MEMACT 90 90
MEMPHYS 101 101
Defaults:
MEMPHYS warnlevel=100 paniclevel=101 (i.e. it will never go red).
MEMSWAP warnlevel=50 paniclevel=80
MEMACT warnlevel=90 paniclevel=97
PROCS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
PROC processname minimumcount maximumcount color [TRACK=id] [TEXT=text]
The "ps" listing sent by the client will be scanned for how many processes containing
"processname" are running, and this is then matched against the min/max settings defined
here. If the running count is outside the thresholds, the color of the "procs" status
changes to "color".
To check for a process that must NOT be running: Set minimum and maximum to 0.
"processname" can be a simple string, in which case this string must show up in the "ps"
listing as a command. The scanner will find a ps-listing of e.g. "/usr/sbin/cron" if you
only specify "processname" as "cron". "processname" can also be a Perl-compatiable
regular expression, e.g. "%java.*inst[0123]" can be used to find entries in the ps-
listing for "java -Xmx512m inst2" and "java -Xmx256 inst3". In that case, "processname"
must begin with "%" followed by the regular expression. Note that Xymon defaults to case-
insensitive pattern matching; if that is not what you want, put "(?-i)" between the "%"
and the regular expression to turn this off. E.g. "%(?-i)HTTPD" will match the word HTTPD
only when it is upper-case.
If "processname" contains whitespace (blanks or TAB), you must enclose the full string in
double quotes - including the "%" if you use regular expression matching. E.g.
PROC "%xymond_channel --channel=data.*xymond_rrd" 1 1 yellow
or
PROC "java -DCLASSPATH=/opt/java/lib" 2 5
You can have multiple "PROC" entries for the same host, all of the checks are merged into
the "procs" status and the most severe check defines the color of the status.
The optional TRACK=id setting causes Xymon to track the number of processes found in an
RRD file, and put this into a graph which is shown on the "procs" status display. The id
setting is a simple text string which will be used as the legend for the graph, and also
as part of the RRD filename. It is recommended that you use only letters and digits for
the ID.
Note that the process counts which are tracked are only performed once when the client
does a poll cycle - i.e. the counts represent snapshots of the system state, not an
average value over the client poll cycle. Therefore there may be peaks or dips in the
actual process counts which will not show up in the graphs, because they happen while the
Xymon client is not doing any polling.
The optional TEXT=text setting is used in the summary of the "procs" status. Normally, the
summary will show the "processname" to identify the process and the related count and
limits. But this may be a regular expression which is not easily recognizable, so if
defined, the text setting string will be used instead. This only affects the "procs"
status display - it has no effect on how the rule counts or recognizes processes in the
"ps" output.
Example: Check that "cron" is running:
PROC cron
Example: Check that at least 5 "httpd" processes are running, but not more than 20:
PROC httpd 5 20
Defaults:
mincount=1, maxcount=-1 (unlimited), color="red".
Note that no processes are checked by default.
MSGS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
LOG logfilename pattern [COLOR=color] [IGNORE=excludepattern]
The Xymon client extracts interesting lines from one or more logfiles - see the client-
local.cfg(5) man-page for information about how to configure which logs a client should
look at.
The LOG setting determine how these extracts of log entries are processed, and what
warnings or alerts trigger as a result.
"logfilename" is the name of the logfile. Only logentries from this filename will be
matched against this rule. Note that "logfilename" can be a regular expression (if
prefixed with a '%' character).
"pattern" is a string or regular expression. If the logfile data matches "pattern", it
will trigger the "msgs" column to change color. If no "color" parameter is present, the
default is to go "red" when the pattern is matched. To match against a regular expression,
"pattern" must begin with a '%' sign - e.g "%WARNING|NOTICE" will match any lines
containing either of these two words. Note that Xymon defaults to case-insensitive
pattern matching; if that is not what you want, put "(?-i)" between the "%" and the
regular expression to turn this off. E.g. "%(?-i)WARNING" will match the word WARNING only
when it is upper-case.
"excludepattern" is a string or regular expression that can be used to filter out any
unwanted strings that happen to match "pattern".
Example: Trigger a red alert when the string "ERROR" appears in the "/var/adm/syslog"
file:
LOG /var/adm/syslog ERROR
Example: Trigger a yellow warning on all occurrences of the word "WARNING" or "NOTICE" in
the "daemon.log" file, except those from the "lpr" system:
LOG /var/log/daemon.log %WARNING|NOTICE COLOR=yellow IGNORE=lpr
Defaults:
color="red", no "excludepattern".
Note that no logfiles are checked by default. Any log data reported by a client will just
show up on the "msgs" column with status OK (green).
FILES STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
FILE filename [color] [things to check] [TRACK]
DIR directoryname [color] [size<MAXSIZE] [size>MINSIZE] [TRACK]
These entries control the status of the "files" column. They allow you to check on various
data for files and directories.
filename and directoryname are names of files or directories, with a full path. You can
use a regular expression to match the names of files and directories reported by the
client, if you prefix the expression with a '%' character.
color is the color that triggers when one or more of the checks fail.
The TRACK keyword causes the size of the file or directory to be tracked in an RRD file,
and presented in a graph on the "files" status display.
For files, you can check one or more of the following:
noexist
triggers a warning if the file exists. By default, a warning is triggered for files
that have a FILE entry, but which do not exist.
ifexist
only checks the file if it exists. If the file is reported as missing by the
client, it is ignored.
type=TYPE
where TYPE is one of "file", "dir", "char", "block", "fifo", or "socket". Triggers
warning if the file is not of the specified type.
ownerid=OWNER
triggers a warning if the owner does not match what is listed here. OWNER is
specified either with the numeric uid, or the user name.
groupid=GROUP
triggers a warning if the group does not match what is listed here. GROUP is
specified either with the numeric gid, or the group name.
mode=MODE
triggers a warning if the file permissions are not as listed. MODE is written in
the standard octal notation, e.g. "644" for the rw-r--r-- permissions.
size<MAX.SIZE and size>MIN.SIZE
triggers a warning it the file size is greater than MAX.SIZE or less than MIN.SIZE,
respectively. For filesizes, you can use the letters "K", "M", "G" or "T" to
indicate that the filesize is in Kilobytes, Megabytes, Gigabytes or Terabytes,
respectively. If there is no such modifier, Kilobytes is assumed. E.g. to warn if a
file grows larger than 1MB, use size<1024M.
mtime>MIN.MTIME mtime<MAX.MTIME
checks how long ago the file was last modified (in seconds). E.g. to check if a
file was updated within the past 10 minutes (600 seconds): mtime<600. Or to check
that a file has NOT been updated in the past 24 hours: mtime>86400.
mtime=TIMESTAMP
checks if a file was last modified at TIMESTAMP. TIMESTAMP is a unix epoch time
(seconds since midnight Jan 1 1970 UTC).
ctime>MIN.CTIME, ctime<MAX.CTIME, ctime=TIMESTAMP
acts as the mtime checks, but for the ctime timestamp (when the directory entry of
the file was last changed, eg. by chown, chgrp or chmod).
md5=MD5SUM, sha1=SHA1SUM, rmd160=RMD160SUM
trigger a warning if the file checksum using the MD5, SHA1 or RMD160 message digest
algorithms do not match the one configured here. Note: The "file" entry in the
client-local.cfg(5) file must specify which algorithm to use.
For directories, you can check one or more of the following:
size<MAX.SIZE and size>MIN.SIZE
triggers a warning it the directory size is greater than MAX.SIZE or less than
MIN.SIZE, respectively. Directory sizes are reported in whatever unit the du
command on the client uses - often KB or diskblocks - so MAX.SIZE and MIN.SIZE must
be given in the same unit.
Experience shows that it can be difficult to get these rules right. Especially when
defining minimum/maximum values for file sizes, when they were last modified etc. The one
thing you must remember when setting up these checks is that the rules describe criteria
that must be met - only when they are met will the status be green.
So "mtime<600" means "the difference between current time and the mtime of the file must
be less than 600 seconds - if not, the file status will go red".
PORTS STATUS COLUMN SETTINGS
PORT criteria [MIN=mincount] [MAX=maxcount] [COLOR=color] [TRACK=id] [TEXT=displaytext]
The "netstat" listing sent by the client will be scanned for how many sockets match the
criteria listed. The criteria you can use are:
LOCAL=addr
"addr" is a (partial) local address specification in the format used on the output
from netstat.
EXLOCAL=addr
Exclude certain local addresses from the rule.
REMOTE=addr
"addr" is a (partial) remote address specification in the format used on the output
from netstat.
EXREMOTE=addr
Exclude certain remote addresses from the rule.
STATE=state
Causes only the sockets in the specified state to be included, "state" is usually
LISTEN or ESTABLISHED but can be any socket state reported by the clients "netstat"
command.
EXSTATE=state
Exclude certain states from the rule.
"addr" is typically "10.0.0.1:80" for the IP 10.0.0.1, port 80. Or "*:80" for any local
address, port 80. Note that the Xymon clients normally report only the numeric data for
IP-addresses and port-numbers, so you must specify the port number (e.g. "80") instead of
the service name ("www").
"addr" and "state" can also be a Perl-compatiable regular expression, e.g.
"LOCAL=%[.:](80|443)" can be used to find entries in the netstat local port for both http
(port 80) and https (port 443). In that case, portname or state must begin with "%"
followed by the reg.expression.
The socket count found is then matched against the min/max settings defined here. If the
count is outside the thresholds, the color of the "ports" status changes to "color". To
check for a socket that must NOT exist: Set minimum and maximum to 0.
The optional TRACK=id setting causes Xymon to track the number of sockets found in an RRD
file, and put this into a graph which is shown on the "ports" status display. The id
setting is a simple text string which will be used as the legend for the graph, and also
as part of the RRD filename. It is recommended that you use only letters and digits for
the ID.
Note that the sockets counts which are tracked are only performed once when the client
does a poll cycle - i.e. the counts represent snapshots of the system state, not an
average value over the client poll cycle. Therefore there may be peaks or dips in the
actual sockets counts which will not show up in the graphs, because they happen while the
Xymon client is not doing any polling.
The TEXT=displaytext option affects how the port appears on the "ports" status page. By
default, the port is listed with the local/remote/state rules as identification, but this
may be somewhat difficult to understand. You can then use e.g. "TEXT=Secure Shell" to make
these ports appear with the name "Secure Shell" instead.
Defaults: mincount=1, maxcount=-1 (unlimited), color="red". Note: No ports are checked by
default.
Example: Check that the SSH daemon is listening on port 22. Track the number of active SSH
connections, and warn if there are more than 5.
PORT LOCAL=%[.:]22$ STATE=LISTEN "TEXT=SSH listener"
PORT LOCAL=%[.:]22$ STATE=ESTABLISHED MAX=5 TRACK=ssh TEXT=SSH
SVCS status (Microsoft Windows clients)
SVC servicename status=(started|stopped) [startup=automatic|disabled|manual]
DS - RRD based status override
DS column filename:dataset rules COLOR=colorname TEXT=explanation
"column" is the statuscolumn that will be modified. "filename" is the name of the RRD file
holding the data you use for comparison. "dataset" is the name of the dataset in the RRD
file - the "rrdtool info" command is useful when determining these. "rules" determine
when to apply the override. You can use ">", ">=", "<" or "<=" to compare the current
measurement value against one or more thresholds. "explanation" is a text that will be
shown to explain the override - you can use some placeholders in the text: "&N" is
replaced with the name of the dataset, "&V" is replaced with the current value, "&L" is
replaced by the low threshold, "&U" is replaced with the upper threshold.
NOTE: This rule uses the raw data value from a client to examine the rules. So this type
of test is only really suitable for datasets that are of the "GAUGE" type. It cannot be
used meaningfully for datasets that use "COUNTER" or "DERIVE" - e.g. the datasets that are
used to capture network packet traffic - because the data stored in the RRD for COUNTER-
based datasets undergo a transformation (calculation) when going into the RRD. Xymon does
not have direct access to the calculated data.
Example: Flag "conn" status a yellow if responsetime exceeds 100 msec.
DS conn tcp.conn.rrd:sec >0.1 COLOR=yellow TEXT="Response time &V exceeds &U seconds"
MQ Series SETTINGS
MQ_QUEUE queuename [age-warning=N] [age-critical=N] [depth-warning=N] [depth-critical=N]
MQ_CHANNEL channelname [warning=PATTERN] [alert=PATTERN]
This is a set of checks for checking the health of IBM MQ message-queues. It requires the
"mq.sh" or similar collector module to run on a node with access to the MQ "Queue Manager"
so it can report the status of queues and channels.
The MQ_QUEUE setting checks the health of a single queue: You can warn (yellow) or alert
(red) based on the depth of the queue, and/or the age of the oldest entry in the queue.
These values are taken directly from the output generated by the "runmqsc" utility.
The MQ_CHANNEL setting checks the health of a single MQ channel: You can warn or alert
based on the reported status of the channel. The PATTERN is a normal pattern, i.e. either
a list of status keywords, or a regular expression pattern.
CHANGING THE DEFAULT SETTINGS
If you would like to use different defaults for the settings described above, then you can
define the new defaults after a DEFAULT line. E.g. this would explicitly define all of the
default settings:
DEFAULT
UP 1h
LOAD 5.0 10.0
DISK * 90 95
MEMPHYS 100 101
MEMSWAP 50 80
MEMACT 90 97
RULES TO SELECT HOSTS
All of the settings can be applied to a group of hosts, by preceding them with rules. A
rule defines of one of more filters using these keywords (note that this is identical to
the rule definitions used in the alerts.cfg(5) file).
PAGE=targetstring Rule matching an alert by the name of the page in Xymon. "targetstring"
is the path of the page as defined in the hosts.cfg file. E.g. if you have this setup:
page servers All Servers
subpage web Webservers
10.0.0.1 www1.foo.com
subpage db Database servers
10.0.0.2 db1.foo.com
Then the "All servers" page is found with PAGE=servers, the "Webservers" page is
PAGE=servers/web and the "Database servers" page is PAGE=servers/db. Note that you can
also use regular expressions to specify the page name, e.g. PAGE=%.*/db would find the
"Database servers" page regardless of where this page was placed in the hierarchy.
The top-level page has a the fixed name /, e.g. PAGE=/ would match all hosts on the Xymon
frontpage. If you need it in a regular expression, use PAGE=%^/ to avoid matching the
forward-slash present in subpage-names.
EXPAGE=targetstring Rule excluding a host if the pagename matches.
HOST=targetstring Rule matching a host by the hostname. "targetstring" is either a comma-
separated list of hostnames (from the hosts.cfg file), "*" to indicate "all hosts", or a
Perl-compatible regular expression. E.g. "HOST=dns.foo.com,www.foo.com" identifies two
specific hosts; "HOST=%www.*.foo.com EXHOST=www-test.foo.com" matches all hosts with a
name beginning with "www", except the "www-test" host.
EXHOST=targetstring Rule excluding a host by matching the hostname.
CLASS=classname Rule match by the client class-name. You specify the class-name for a host
when starting the client through the "--class=NAME" option to the runclient.sh script. If
no class is specified, the host by default goes into a class named by the operating
system.
EXCLASS=classname Exclude all hosts belonging to "classname" from this rule.
DISPLAYGROUP=groupstring Rule matching an alert by the text of the display-group (text
following the group, group-only, group-except heading) in the hosts.cfg file.
"groupstring" is the text for the group, stripped of any HTML tags. E.g. if you have this
setup:
group Web
10.0.0.1 www1.foo.com
10.0.0.2 www2.foo.com
group Production databases
10.0.1.1 db1.foo.com
Then the hosts in the Web-group can be matched with DISPLAYGROUP=Web, and the database
servers can be matched with DISPLAYGROUP="Production databases". Note that you can also
use regular expressions, e.g. DISPLAYGROUP=%database. If there is no group-setting for
the host, use "DISPLAYGROUP=NONE".
EXDISPLAYGROUP=groupstring Rule excluding a group by matching the display-group string.
TIME=timespecification Rule matching by the time-of-day. This is specified as the DOWNTIME
time specification in the hosts.cfg file. E.g. "TIME=W:0800:2200" applied to a rule will
make this rule active only on week-days between 8AM and 10PM.
DIRECTING ALERTS TO GROUPS
For some tests - e.g. "procs" or "msgs" - the right group of people to alert in case of a
failure may be different, depending on which of the client rules actually detected a
problem. E.g. if you have PROCS rules for a host checking both "httpd" and "sshd"
processes, then the Web admins should handle httpd-failures, whereas "sshd" failures are
handled by the Unix admins.
To handle this, all rules can have a "GROUP=groupname" setting. When a rule with this
setting triggers a yellow or red status, the groupname is passed on to the Xymon alerts
module, so you can use it in the alert rule definitions in alerts.cfg(5) to direct alerts
to the correct group of people.
RULES: APPLYING SETTINGS TO SELECTED HOSTS
Rules must be placed after the settings, e.g.
LOAD 8.0 12.0 HOST=db.foo.com TIME=*:0800:1600
If you have multiple settings that you want to apply the same rules to, you can write the
rules *only* on one line, followed by the settings. E.g.
HOST=%db.*.foo.com TIME=W:0800:1600
LOAD 8.0 12.0
DISK /db 98 100
PROC mysqld 1
will apply the three settings to all of the "db" hosts on week-days between 8AM and 4PM.
This can be combined with per-settings rule, in which case the per-settings rule overrides
the general rule; e.g.
HOST=%.*.foo.com
LOAD 7.0 12.0 HOST=bax.foo.com
LOAD 3.0 8.0
will result in the load-limits being 7.0/12.0 for the "bax.foo.com" host, and 3.0/8.0 for
all other foo.com hosts.
The entire file is evaluated from the top to bottom, and the first match found is used. So
you should put the specific settings first, and the generic ones last.
NOTES
For the LOG, FILE and DIR checks, it is necessary also to configure the actual file- and
directory-names in the client-local.cfg(5) file. If the filenames are not listed there,
the clients will not collect any data about these files/directories, and the settings in
the analysis.cfg file will be silently ignored.
The ability to compute file checksums with MD5, SHA1 or RMD160 should not be used for
general-purpose file integrity checking, since the overhead of calculating these on a
large number of files can be significant. If you need this, look at tools designed for
this purpose - e.g. Tripwire or AIDE.
At the time of writing (april 2006), the SHA-1 and RMD160 algorithms are considered
cryptographically safe. The MD5 algorithm has been shown to have some weaknesses, and is
not considered strong enough when a high level of security is required.
SEE ALSO
xymond_client(8), client-local.cfg(5), xymond(8), xymon(7)