Monitoring

09 Feb 2019
Fastnetmon on Ubuntu 18.04
Installing FastNetMon community edition from Ubuntu 18.04 universe repository: configuring exabgp 4.0.2 with new config format using socat and pipe communication, testing BGP BLACKHOLE route injection via /var/run/exabgp.cmd for automated DDoS mitigation.
07 Feb 2016
HTML Email with Nagios
Implementing HTML-formatted Nagios alerts using nagios-html-email: installing via npm, configuring custom notification commands, and replacing mailx with sendmail to properly render HTML email notifications.
21 Jan 2016
How I Use Nagios
Building Nagios 4 from source on Debian to monitor 75 hosts and 130 services: implementing custom checks for TCP services, DNS zones, XMPP, Tor, HTTP/HTTPS with cert expiry, plus SMS alerts via nagios-twilio and enhanced email with mtr output.
29 Nov 2015
Monitoring Onions
Monitoring Tor hidden services with Nagios using torsocks: creating check_commands for HTTP/SSH/TCP over Tor, tracking onion availability/performance, and publishing monion repository with sample configs for .onion monitoring.
22 Nov 2015
Nagios and IPv6
Implementing IPv6 monitoring in Nagios: creating dual-stack service checks with -4/-6 flags, defining custom _ADDRESS4/_ADDRESS6 variables for DNS independence, and navigating IPv4-only plugin limitations like check_icmp.
10 Sep 2015
Running Smokeping on Jessie
Fixing Smokeping after Debian Wheezy to Jessie upgrade: Apache 2.2 to 2.4 migration breaks conf.d structure, requiring manual symlinks in conf-enabled directory for smokeping and OTRS configurations.
05 Sep 2015
Nagios Logs, Handy One-Liner
Converting Nagios log timestamps to human-readable format using Perl one-liner: piping epoch timestamps through localtime() substitution for on-the-fly date conversion in monitoring logs and BGP data.
19 Jan 2015
MikroTik SNMP Oddity
Troubleshooting MikroTik CCR1036 SNMP failure on loopback interface: packet captures reveal implementation quirk refusing to return traffic via different interface than request arrived on, requiring monitoring via closest interface IP.
21 Dec 2014
SaltStack, CouchDB, and Nagios
Building distributed monitoring with SaltStack returners to CouchDB: storing nagios check results globally from multiple VPS locations, visualizing traceroutes/latency, and designing contextual alerts beyond simple up/down states.
25 Nov 2014
Observium November Release
Observium 0.14.11 released on schedule: new alerting system, Cisco ASA IPv4 session graphing from FIREWALL-MIB, Cambium Canopy support, and enabling built-in VMware ESXi SNMP monitoring.
21 Nov 2014
Service Status via SaltStack 2014.7 with Nagios
Exploring SaltStack 2014.7's nagios module: remote execution of nagios-plugins on minions, pillar-defined check lists with Jinja templating, distributed monitoring ideas, and contributing documentation fixes to SaltStack.
06 Apr 2014
Observium 0.14.4
Observium 0.14.4 Community Edition release includes security fixes and interface description parsing for port labeling and aggregate interface graphs.
13 Jan 2014
UPS SNMP Management
UPS SNMP Management
15 Jan 2013
Observium, A Worthy Adversary!
First impressions of Observium network monitoring platform after 10 years with Cacti. Auto-discovery, 64-bit counters, total device traffic graphs, and MAC/ARP tables make it a compelling alternative.