Ubuntu Manpage: client-local.cfg - Local configuration settings for Xymon clients

NAME

       client-local.cfg - Local configuration settings for Xymon clients

SYNOPSIS

       ~xymon/server/etc/client-local.cfg

DESCRIPTION

       The  client-local.cfg  file  contains  settings  that  are  used  by  each Xymon client when it runs on a
       monitored host. It provides a convenient way of configuring  clients  from  a  central  location  without
       having to setup special configuration maintenance tools on all clients.

       The client-local.cfg file is currently used to configure what logfiles the client should fetch data from,
       to  be  used  as the basis for the "msgs" status column; and to configure which files and directories are
       being monitored in the "files" status column.

       Note that there is a dependency between the client-local.cfg file  and  the  analysis.cfg(5)  file.  When
       monitoring  e.g.  a logfile, you must first enter it into the client-local.cfg file, to trigger the Xymon
       client into reporting any data about the logfile. Next, you must  configure  analysis.cfg  so  the  Xymon
       server  knows what to look for in the file data sent by the client. So: client-local.cfg defines what raw
       data is collected by the client, and analysis.cfg defines how to analyze them.

PROPAGATION TO CLIENTS

       The client-local.cfg file resides on the Xymon server.

       When clients connect to the Xymon server to send in their client data, they will  receive  part  of  this
       file back from the Xymon server.  The configuration received by the client is then used the next time the
       client runs.

       This  method  of propagating the configuration means that there is a delay of up to two poll cycles (i.e.
       5-10 minutes) from a configuration change is entered into the client-local.cfg file, and  until  you  see
       the result in the status messages reported by the client.

       By default, xymond will look for a matching entry by matching the client hostname, classname or operating
       system  name  against  the section expressions.  Hostname matches are used first, then classname matches,
       then OS matches.  The first match found is the one that is returned to the client.

       If xymond is started with the "--merge-clientlocal" option, then xymond will instead  merge  all  of  the
       matching  sections  into  one,  and  return all of this data to the client. So you can have host-specific
       entries, and then supplement them with class- or os-generic entries.  Note  that  the  merging  does  not
       remove  entries,  so  if  you  have e.g. a "log" entry defined in both a hostname- and an osname-matching
       section, then both entries will be sent back to the client.

FILE FORMAT

       The file is divided into sections, delimited by  "[name]"  lines.   A  section  name  can  be  either  an
       operating  system identifier - linux, solaris, hp-ux, aix, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, darwin - a class, or
       a hostname. When deciding which section to send to a client, Xymon will first look for  a  section  named
       after  the  hostname of the client; if such a section does not exist, it will look for a section named by
       the operating system of the client. So you can configure special configurations for individual hosts, and
       have a default configuration for all other hosts of a certain type.

       It will often be practical to use regular expressions for hostnames.  To do this you must use

           [host=<expression>]

       where <expression> is a Perl-compatible regular expression. The same kind of  matching  can  be  done  on
       operating system or host class, using

           [os=<expresssion>]
           [class=<expression>]

       Apart from the section delimiter, the file format is free-form, or rather it is defined by the tools that
       make use of the configuration.

LOGFILE CONFIGURATION ENTRIES

A logfile configuration entry looks like this:

log:/var/log/messages:10240
ignore MARK
trigger Oops

The log:FILENAME:SIZE line defines the filename of the log, and the maximum amount of data (in bytes) to
send to the Xymon server. FILENAME is usually an explicit full-path filename on the client. If it is
enclosed in backticks, it is a command which the Xymon client runs and each line of output from this
command is then used as a filename. This allows scripting which files to monitor, e.g. if you have
logfiles that are named with some sort of timestamp. If FILENAME is enclosed in angle brackets it is
treated as a glob and passed through the local glob(3) function first.

The ignore PATTERN line (optional) defines lines in the logfile which are ignored entirely, i.e. they are
stripped from the logfile data before sending it to the Xymon server. It is used to remove completely
unwanted "noise" entries from the logdata processed by Xymon. "PATTERN" is a regular expression.

The trigger PATTERN line (optional) is used only when there is more data in the log than the maximum size
set in the "log:FILENAME:SIZE" line. The "trigger" pattern is then used to find particularly interesting
lines in the logfile - these will always be sent to the Xymon server. After picking out the "trigger"
lines, any remaining space up to the maximum size is filled in with the most recent entries from the
logfile. "PATTERN" is a regular expression.

COUNTING LOGENTRIES

       A  special type of log-handling is possible, where the number of lines matching a regular expressions are
       merely counted. This is linecount:FILENAME, followed by a number of lines of the form ID:PATTERN. E.g.

           linecount:/var/log/messages
           diskerrors:I/O error.*device.*hd
           badlogins:Failed login

FILE CONFIGURATION ENTRIES

       A file monitoring entry is used to watch the meta-data  of  a  file:  Owner,  group,  size,  permissions,
       checksum etc. It looks like this:

           file:/var/log/messages[:HASH]

       The  file:FILENAME  line  defines  the  filename  of  the file to monitor.  As with the "log:" entries, a
       filename enclosed in backticks means a  command  which  will  generate  the  filenames  dynamically.  The
       optional [:HASH] setting defines what type of hash to compute for the file: md5, rmd160, sha1, or sha256,
       sha512, sha224, or sha384. By default, no hash is calculated.
       NOTE:  If  you  want  to  check  multiple  files using a wildcard, you must use a command to generate the
       filenames. Putting wildcards directly into the file: entry will not work.

DIRECTORY CONFIGURATION ENTRIES

       A directory monitoring entry is used to watch the size of a directory and any sub-directories.  It  looks
       like this:

           dir:DIRECTORYNAME

       The  dir:DIRECTORYNAME  line  defines the filename of the file to monitor.  As with the "log:" entries, a
       filename enclosed in backticks means a command which  will  generate  the  filenames  dynamically  and  a
       filename  enclosed  in  angle brackets will be treated as a fileglob. The Xymon client will run the du(1)
       command with the directoryname as parameter, and send the output back to the Xymon server.
       NOTE: If you want to check multiple directories using a wildcard, you must  use  a  command  or  glob  to
       generate  the  directory  names.   Putting wildcards directly into the dir: entry will not work. E.g. use
       something like
            dir:`find /var/log -maxdepth 1 -type d`

       The "du" command used can be configured through the DU environment variable in the  xymonclient.cfg  file
       if  needed. If not specified, du -k is used, as on some systems by default du reports data in disk blocks
       instead of KB (e.g. Solaris).

NOTES

       The ability of the Xymon client to calculate file hashes and monitor those can be used for file integrity
       validation on a small scale. However, there is a significant processing  overhead  in  calculating  these
       every time the Xymon client runs, so this should not be considered a replacement for host-based intrusion
       detection systems such as Tripwire or AIDE.

       Use  of  the  directory  monitoring  on  directory  structures  with  a large number of files and/or sub-
       directories can be quite ressource-intensive.