BoxMon
About
BoxMon is a system monitoring tool. Data collecting is done through simple python scripts that are used as plugins in boxMon, in a cron job. With gathered data, it's possible to build some graphs, showing the evolution of the system by day, week, month or year.
With this tool you can monitor as many host as you want and store the data in a single database.
- Requirements:
- mysql server (somewhere on the network)
- mysql client (on the target host)
- python (>=2.1 but not checked)
- python-mysql
- Also if you want to graph something (we hope so :) :
- gnuplot
- apache (with CGI enabled)
Here is a common setup for boxMon :
Screenshots
GNUPlot is used to make graphs, generated through the boxMon CGI script.
Network load:
System load:
Download
Latest release is 0.0.3
Developpement code is accessible from the PythonFR SVN repository or with any SVN client like this :
$ svn co http://svn.pythonfr.org/public/pythonfr/boxMon
Installation
All you need here is distutils, which is packaged with recent pythons. If you're using debian, install python2.1-dev (or your preferred version)
$ python setup.py build
as root:
# python setup.py install
Once the package is installed, do the following:
create the database on the SQL server
mysql -u root -p < boxMon.sql
copy boxMonrc.sample to /etc/boxMonrc and change it to for your needs (mainly PluginPath and SQL parameters) You can also configure the /etc/boxMonrc with:
boxMon --configure
add this to root crontab:
0-59/5 * * * * /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/boxMon > /dev/null
root account is needed by some plugins but this may change
install the CGI script:
ln -s /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages/boxMon/boxMon.cgi /usr/lib/cgi-bin/boxMon.cgi
Check out the Makefile to do this automatically without risk !!
Warning
For now you have to give apache user (www-data on Debian) read permission to /etc/boxMonrc.
Miscellaneous
On the misc directory you'll find some PHP pages you can use to see all your graphs in one shot. There's also the project's logo, courtesy of xtd at altern NOSPAM dot org.
Note on ApacheHits plugin
You'll need to tweak your apache config :
#--- <httpd.conf> ------ LoadModule status_module /usr/lib/apache/1.3/mod_status.so <Location /server-status> SetHandler server-status Order Deny,Allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 </Location> # don't want to count these hits ! SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "^/server-status?" nolog CustomLog /var/log/apache/access.log combined env=!nolog #---- </httpd.conf> -----
Note on Iptables plugin
This one is not very smart because it requires some modifications in your firewall. That's why it's advised to use NetStats plugin instead.