Readme file for syslog.monitor
$Id: README.syslog.monitor,v 1.2 2004/11/15 14:45:18 vitroth Exp $

(Note: This Readme file is an insult to the reader. Better documentation
 will come as soon as I find more time and fix some more bugs)

INTRODUCTION

This is a syslog for mon (http://www.kernel.org/software/mon/) by Jim
Trocki.

It is different from the other monitors, because it is constantly running
and communicates with the mon server via Mon::Client over the network,
instead of running under mon's supervision.

It listens for syslog packets comeing in from the network, parse them,
checks them against a rule set and reports to the mon server if necessary.

REQUIREMENTS

You need to have the following non-std Perl modules installed:

     Time::HiRes
	 Mon::Client

DETAILS

syslog.monitor accepts a single command line parameter, the name of the
configuration file. All options are explained inside the configuration file,
see syslog.conf as an example.

At startup, the daemon retrieves a list of all watches from the mon server
for which a service "syslog" is defined. We also read the hostgroup
definition for this watch from the mon server. (The hostnames are resolved
and the result is used to check if the incoming syslog packet is accepted
and which host it came from, so you should make sure your hostnames resolve
to all IPs from which your systems might send a syslog packet - on a Cisco,
you might want to consider "logging source-interface")

This basically amounts to:

  For every hostgroup you want syslog.monitor to accept and monitor syslog
  packets, define a syslog service.

This watch/service is where we later send our traps.

For those hosts, add a line like

*.*         @syslog.monitor.host.name

to /etc/syslog.conf.

Configure syslog.monitor by editing syslog.conf and following the comments
therein.

Start syslog.monitor.

Restart mon.

killall -HUP syslogd on the hosts you want to monitor.

Read the logfiles and fix the problems. ;-)


AUTHOR

Please don't bother Jim with questions relating to this.

If this should lead to global warming, code freeze or Elvis's revival, I
accept absolutely no responsibility. However, I will gladly receive and
incoporate bugfixes and sensible bug reports.

Lars Marowsky-Brée <lars@marowsky-bree.de>
URL

It appears we have made our way to
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/software/mon/contrib/ - please use a mirror, as
described on http://www.kernel.org/.
