Nav-users September 2008

nav-users@lister.sikt.no

10 participants
16 discussions

Re: Question on SNMP/tempInlet
by Tim Chown 05 Sep '08

05 Sep '08

On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 09:42:44AM +0200, Morten Brekkevold wrote: > > > > # The e-mail address of the NAV system administrator. All cron error > > # messages will be sent to this address. > > ADMIN_MAIL=systjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk > > > > I suggest you add another option > > > > CRON_MAIL=.... > > > > so you can still have an admin contact on the NAV system/web view, but > > direct cron stuff easily to nowhere. Or maybe a variable for just the > > Cricket cron outputs if NAV cron output is useful :) > > The ADMIN_MAIL setting has no relation to what is displayed as a > contact anywhere on the NAV web; that's just regular HTML configured > by the administrators in the webfront config/template files. > > The point of ADMIN_MAIL is to have something to fall back to if all > other methods of getting attention fail. Ah my bad, I assumed the contact info that by default is bottom right of the NAV home was take from there. But it isn't :) > One thing you can do is edit /etc/nav/cron.d/cricket and redirect > everything from the collect-subtrees cricket command to /dev/null and > then run "nav restart cricket" to reinstall the cron snippet into > navcron's crontab. > > If you do that, you can still find cricket's messages in its log > files. It's default loglevel is more verbose than just error > messages, so you'd either have to grep the logs for errors or adjust > the loglevel in cricket-conf.pl. Nice tip, thanks. -- Tim

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Re: Question on SNMP/tempInlet
by Tim Chown 05 Sep '08

05 Sep '08

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 10:11:39AM +0200, Morten Brekkevold wrote: > On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:18:12 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > > >> b1-l1-cat1 may have indexed one of its temperature sensors as 1 > >> during the initial import into NAV, and then changed its mind at a > >> later time. That would account for the problem you're having. > > > > Thanks for the explanation. What then is the recommended way to > > suppress errors related to this OID? NAV kindly generates email > > alerts for errors when querying devices, we just have a few too many > > related to this OID :) > > There is no recommended way, really. Cricket is a noisy fellow, > complaining about every little thing that annoys it, and since it > normally runs every five minutes, it annoys the heck out of many a > sysadmin during the course of a day. Now I realise why it is called cricket. Nothing to do with the game :) > Most installations I've run into either direct cron-mail from Cricket > into /dev/null, or put it into a mailbox they check less often than > their inbox. It's output is not all terribly useful. OK, so a suggestion is that in nav.conf you currently have (for example): # The e-mail address of the NAV system administrator. All cron error # messages will be sent to this address. ADMIN_MAIL=systjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk I suggest you add another option CRON_MAIL=.... so you can still have an admin contact on the NAV system/web view, but direct cron stuff easily to nowhere. Or maybe a variable for just the Cricket cron outputs if NAV cron output is useful :) > > Is there a recommended way to configure NAV to not poll our 3750 > > stacks for temp data? > > You could re-profile them and see whether NAV notices that they don't > support that OID anymore. Thanks for the explanation, it does help a lot to understand it, though reprofiling had no effect :/ > > A week ago I knew far less about OIDs and I think I was better for > > it :) > > Welcome to the wonderful world of SNMP ;) We've just started looking at our 1230 series Cisco APs and including them in NAV. Fun with OIDs there too. I think that will be for a separate mail later ;) Thanks again for the excellent support/explanations. -- Tim

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Re: Device names query
by Tim Chown 04 Sep '08

04 Sep '08

On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 10:52:14AM +0200, Morten Brekkevold wrote: > On Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:31:01 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > > > Regarding the database change offer, we'd be up for trying it if you can > > provide the magic incantation :) > > Sure, these two statements should reset the sysname of all CAM/ARP > entried related to devices which are registered in your NAV at the > moment: > > UPDATE arp SET sysname=n.sysname FROM netbox n WHERE n.netboxid=arp.netboxid; > UPDATE cam SET sysname=n.sysname FROM netbox n WHERE n.netboxid=cam.netboxid; > > You can connect to the database using the psql command line tool, > e.g. "psql manage nav" to connect to the manage database as the nav > user. Use the password from NAV's db.conf. > > I must warn you that these statements can be quite slow, depending on > the number of records you have in the two tables. If you have made > any actual device renames during NAV's runtime, these devices' records > will also be falsified by these statements. We have only been running for a month or so on 15 stacks, so it was actually very quick :) manage=> UPDATE arp SET sysname=n.sysname FROM netbox n WHERE n.netboxid=arp.netboxid; UPDATE 12824 manage=> UPDATE cam SET sysname=n.sysname FROM netbox n WHERE n.netboxid=cam.netboxid; UPDATE 68724 As far as we can see, all the old historic IP-names are now updated to names, which has added consistency to the searches and machine tracker. Many thanks :) > > If you want to use this essentially as a way to test how you'd add a > > conversion option to NAV, we're happy to test. > > I don't think we want that. We value the historic accuracy of cam and > arp records; we'd rather make sure the machine tracker can search > records across name changes. I agree - the above fix is a useful tip for when a new site like us doesn't have reverse DNS capability in place before firing up NAV, to 'clean' the data. -- Tim

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Re: Device names query
by Tim Chown 04 Sep '08

04 Sep '08

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 03:51:51PM +0200, Morten Brekkevold wrote: > On Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:43:25 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > > > We since ensured the names resolved, and NAV figured this out, with > > new data being linked to the devices by name, rather than the 'IP name'. > > > > The problem seems to be though that the 'IP name' causes some problems > > when searching on data, e.g. a search based on the new name won't > > match against the old 'IP name'. > > > > Is there a neat way to fix this? e.g. perhaps to simply remove all records > > for the 'IP name' devices? > > You didn't specify what you mean by "data" and searching said "data", > but I will assume you are referring to the Machine Tracker. > > CAM and ARP data are basically stored as logs in the database and used > by the Machine Tracker. Since a CAM/ARP entry in NAV is a historic > record, it retains historic names of the originating devices. > > When you search for a sysname in Machine Tracker, it searches for > records matching that exact/partial name. > > We do however store a reference to the IP device record of the > originating device with each CAM/ARP entry. As long as an IP device > stays registered in NAV, any name changes can be inferred from its > recorded CAM/ARP data. Once the IP device is removed from NAV, the > historic CAM/ARP data remains, but can no longer be used to infer name > changes over time for that particular device. > > So, in short, we could actually add a feature to the Machine Tracker > to find CAM/ARP entries recorded under other names than the one used > in the search form. You're welcome to add this as a wishlist priority > item at https://bugs.launchpad.net/nav if it sounds like something you > would want. I suspect a few people will make the smae 'mistake' that we did, to enter systems by name, but these are converted to IP-names because a reverse lookup is not available. I think this warning was in the small print of the docs, but we were too excited during install and missed it. We'll check out the new bugtracker very soon! Regarding the database change offer, we'd be up for trying it if you can provide the magic incantation :) The switch stacks are: 10.78.64.61 b86-l1-cat1 10.78.64.63 b59-l2-cat1 10.78.64.64 b59-l3-cat1 10.78.64.65 b59-l4-cat1 10.78.64.66 b1-l1-cat1 10.78.64.67 b16-l2-cat1 10.78.64.68 b1-l1-cat2 10.78.64.69 b32-l3-cat1 10.78.64.70 b32-l3-cat2 10.78.64.71 b32-l4-cat1 10.78.64.72 b32-l4-cat2 10.78.64.75 b59-l3-cat2 10.78.64.76 b53-l2-cat1 10.78.64.77 b53-l3-cat1 10.78.64.78 b53-l4-cat1 10.78.64.79 b53-l4-cat2 Some were added after we arranged reverse DNS to work (added a local /etc/hosts entry for convenience) so may not have the problem, but most of them do. If you want to use this essentially as a way to test how you'd add a conversion option to NAV, we're happy to test. -- Tim

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Re: Question on SNMP/tempInlet
by Tim Chown 04 Sep '08

04 Sep '08

On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 03:24:58PM +0200, Morten Brekkevold wrote: > On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:35:44 +0100 Tim Chown <tjc(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > > > Error and the lines leading up to it: > > [14-Aug-2008 14:40:01 ] Some data is missing for b1-l1-cat1 (). > > [14-Aug-2008 14:40:01*] Received SNMP response with error code noSuchName. OID: 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.13.1.3.1.3.1 > > > > And yet if I look at the SNMP OID support listed for the device as > > reported by NAV I see: > > > > b1-l1-cat1 tempInlet 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.13.1.3.1.3.1 CISCO-ENVMON-MIB ciscoEnvMonTemperatureStatusValue 21600 > > > > which implies the OID is supported, and is the device inlet temperature. > > > > Is there some additional IOS config required to make this particular data > > available to Cricket? Being new to OIDs, I'm confused as to why it seems > > to be available according to NAV, yet Cricket's getting an error. > > I'm sorry to say that NAV's support for monitoring temperatures on > Cisco devices is hopelessly broken. > > The abovementioned OID refers to the temperature value of a > temperature sensor indexed as 1 in the proprietary CISCO-ENVMON-MIB. > NAV assumes this is the inlet temperature sensor. However, the MIB > definition states that the sensor indices are arbitrarily chosen by > the device, and have no intrinsic meaning. The name of each sensor > must be read from a different column of the temperature table. > > The equipment base this was written for (several years ago) may very > well have had their inlet sensors indexed as 1 in the temperature > table, but recent IOS versions seem to have changed things. > > b1-l1-cat1 may have indexed one of its temperature sensors as 1 during > the initial import into NAV, and then changed its mind at a later > time. That would account for the problem you're having. Thanks for the explanation. What then is the recommended way to suppress errors related to this OID? NAV kindly generates email alerts for errors when querying devices, we just have a few too many related to this OID :) Is there a recommended way to configure NAV to not poll our 3750 stacks for temp data? I see there are config files under Cricket for generic routers and switches with this OID, i.e.: /etc/nav/cricket-config/routers/Defaults /etc/nav/cricket-config/switches/Defaults And also some reference in /etc/nav/cricketoids.txt /etc/nav/cricket-config/config.db It looks like Cricket generates the Defaults file and the config.db each night, while cricketoids.txt is static, but it's not clear to us where those nightly builds are driven from (i.e. where we could remove/suppress the temp entry). It sounds like even using snmpwalk to grab the current indexed value wouldn't help as it is liable to change. The temperature queries work just fine for our Cisco 6509, so ideally we wouldn't want to generically remove temp readings for everything. A week ago I knew far less about OIDs and I think I was better for it :) Thanks, Tim

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Feature request - list more info about SRVs
by Ingeborg Hellemo 02 Sep '08

02 Sep '08

Most of our boxes of type SRV has a "Function" associated with it. This field can be seen via https://.../report/netbox?catid=SRV but not when you browse the individual box. Is it possible to add this field (together with Type, Organisation etc) to the output on <https://.../browse/foo.uit.no/) (and in the new <https://.../ipdevinfo/foo.uit.no/>) ? --Ingeborg -- Ingeborg Østrem Hellemo -- ingeborg(a)cc.uit.no (Univ. of Tromsø, Norway)

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Nav-users September 2008