Monitoring servers

[Keary Suska]

I make it a rule to avoid RPC if at all possible. It may be more robust and
secure to have a script that gathers the desired information from system
commands and stores it in a log file, executed on schedule by cron. Having
the server collate its own data avoids data loss in the event of a client
connectivity issue. You can then have a daemon script invoked by inetd (if
you use it, but ucspi-tcp is better:
ftp://cr.yp.to/ucspi-tcp/ucspi-tcp-0.88.tar.gz) so it's resource use is
minimized. If the security of the data is important, which I imagine it is,
you could tunnel the communications through ssh, or use scp or rsync over
ssh to collate the data on a client. Stein's "Network Programming with Perl"
is a great resource for networking scripts. There may be a way to use SSL
over custom ports with self-signed certificates, but I have never tried
it--sounds too painful.

Keary Suska
Esoteritech, Inc.
"Leveraging Open Source for a better Internet"

> From: "Robert L. Harris" <Robert.L.Harris at rdlg.net>
> Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 13:34:36 -0600
> To: Pikes-Peak Perl Mongers <pikes-peak-pm-list at happyfunball.pm.org>
> Subject: Monitoring servers
> 
> 
> 
> I'm looking at a script that'll be run once a day or so, connect to them
> and get uptime, users, etc.
> 
> I was hoping to just run a "rup" against them but the output seems a bit
> fishy.  While wondering I was thinking there might be a perl module that'll
> querey a whod or the like, but I can't seem to find one.
> 
> Other than writing my own daemon to put on each server and give the info
> I want to a client that connects, does anyone have any good suggestions?
> I can't seem to find any modules that would be very useful.
> 
> Robert
> 
> 
> 
> :wq!
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Robert L. Harris                |  Micros~1 :
> Senior System Engineer          |    For when quality, reliability
> at RnD Consulting             |      and security just aren't
> \_       that important!
> DISCLAIMER:
> These are MY OPINIONS ALONE.  I speak for no-one else.
> FYI:
> perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(115),10);'
> 
>