From owner-cvs-src@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 31 13:41:24 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: cvs-src@FreeBSD.org Delivered-To: cvs-src@FreeBSD.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E754916A420 for ; Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:41:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2ED9643D45 for ; Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:41:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BABBA46C51; Tue, 31 Jan 2006 08:41:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:43:10 +0000 (GMT) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Anton Yuzhaninov In-Reply-To: <1881677654.20060131162438@citrin.ru> Message-ID: <20060131133854.V95776@fledge.watson.org> References: <200601301233.k0UCXiKq085748@repoman.freebsd.org> <20060130123525.GD83922@FreeBSD.org> <20060130215816.GC91655@wantadilla.lemis.com> <20060130235717.J95776@fledge.watson.org> <1881677654.20060131162438@citrin.ru> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: cvs-src@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re[2]: cvs commit: src/etc/defaults periodic.conf X-BeenThere: cvs-src@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: CVS commit messages for the src tree List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:41:25 -0000 On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Anton Yuzhaninov wrote: > RW> My daily script parsers certainly aren't. I quite like being able to pull in > RW> a mailbox of old daily output and plot disk space use over time. > > For automated monitoring better (and more safe in case of changing daily > mail output) to use SNMP based tools like nagios, zabbix, remstats, cacti... > > Daily mail more useful for human reading. Actually, the daily (etc) script output proves to be a very reliable and useful way to manage long-term monitoring. The format is generally consistent (xcept when commits like the one that spawned this thread happen), and the logs are easily kept locally or reliably sent over the network. If the network is down, sendmail happily spools the output for later delivery, it can be sent to multiple recipients without special tools, and so on. I recognize the usefulness of SNMP, but think SNMP is a tool you use to support things like long-term monitoring, not the presentation piece itself. One of the nicest things about the periodic scripts is that they require literally zero configuration -- you don't have to set up daemons, manage keying material, maintain additional packages, etc. With recent bsnmp work, SNMP has become a lot more capable of monitoring the interesting things about FreeBSD, but it's still not what I'm actually looking for. I don't know if anyone has written it yet, but it would be quite neat to have an SNMP-driven implementation of {top, netstat, ps, df, ifconfig} that can be easily pointed at bsnmpd on local or remote machines. That way you get the current UNIX management interface, which is well-understood and easily scripted, with a distributed back-end. Robert N M Watson