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Intro Pandora Questions
Hello all. I’m kicking the tires on Pandora as a new monitoring solution -I haven’t used it before, have done Nagios in previous shops (and that was a while ago). I have two immediate questions that would be important for any future rollout.
1) How do I best separate system type and system location? (As in, a given agent is both ‘Database Server’ and ‘Seattle Datacenter’)Â In theory this would be two different groups, but it appears I can only assign one group at a time. Tags might work around that, but those apply to the module level.
2) Can I apply SNMP auth info globally at the agent level? It looks like I have to do it module by module, which is tedious, since for a given agent every module will use the same settings.
Thanks!
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12 Replies
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Hello cgill,
We are happy you are taking a look at Pandora FMS as your possible new monitoring solution. About your questions:
1. It is not possible to assign an agent to two different groups. Based on your example, I would use subgroups, let’s say a global “Database servers” group and a “Seattle Datacenter” subgroup, or the opposite.
2. You can use bulk operations to copy modules from one agent to another, so if you have defined a SNMP check in one of them, you can copy the module to many other agents as you need and they will take the new agent’s IP direction to execute the SNMP check against it, maintaining all the other parameters.
Kind regards,
Antonio. -
Thanks, that’s helpful.
On 1, that’s probably adequate for our purposes, since we care more about site than role, but being able to group by both would still be a good improvement.
On 2, I may not have explained well. IT appears that, when having a suite of SNMP checks on the same agent (eth0 in, eth0 out, cpu load, memory use, temperature, etc), I have to go in and configure the SNMP connection (we’re using v3, which means username, password and encryption) separate for each module. What I’d like to be able to do is set the SNMP info once for the whole agent, and then have it apply to any SNMP-based module attached to that agent. That doesn’t seem possible.I’ve also run into another issue, wherein I can’t assign parents to agents. I can fill in the Parent box with a name, select it, update, and then it disappears. If I go in and twiddle the database directly, I can assign it, but that’s clearly not a viable long-term solution.
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Hello cgill,
About the SNMP, it is not possible to assign global SNMP values per agent, but there are several similar options to do that. I’ll explain them as easy and quick as possible:
1. Using module templates: you define network components, being SNMP modules with version and credentials (if it is V3, all the required parameters such as auth method, pass, etc.), and also OID (Enterprise string) for that specific check, IP address is not configured here.Â
Then it is possible to assign this network component to module templates. This way you create a custom template with let’s say 10 SNMP modules. By applying the template to all the agents you need, you won’t need configure anything else on the modules, since you already defined the SNMP parameters when creating the network component and the IP address is taken from the agent’s own configured IP address.2. Using bulk operations, you can combine this second option with the first one. By selecting “module operations -> copy” you will be able to take all the SNMP modules previously created from one agent and copy them to all the agents needed; IP address will be set when copying them, using the agent’s one, like on the case 1.Â
For the “source” agent from which you will copy the modules to all the other agents you can either create manually all the SNMP modules on an agent (yes, this first time you’ll have to define them manually) or load the modules from a template.3. Using SNMP wizards. If you go to the management section of the agent you will find on the “Agent wizard” flap the SNMP wizard and the SNMP interface wizard. These two useful tools allow you to make a full snmpwalk over the agent setting the SNMP credentials only once, selecting several SNMP elements (with ctrl or shift) and adding them to the agent with just one click.Â
Generally you will use the interface wizard for network hardware devices.About the issue you’ve found, I have tested it on a 7.0 version of my own and it works just fine here, what’s the version you are using? You can find this information on the footer of the web console.
I hope this information is useful to you.
Kind regards,
Antonio. -
Thanks for the guidance on SNMP, Antonio, I’ll give that whirl, sounds like it gets close. Presumably I could create a ‘dummy’ machine as a template to copy everything from for each type of machine I want to monitor.
As for changing groups, I’m running “Pandora FMS v7.0NG.701 – Build PC170425 – MR 0”. Taking a look at the mysql query logs, it appears the console is passing group ID 0, no matter what I’ve selected. I’ve tried this on a number of browsers (firefox, chrome, safari) to the same result.
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Ok, so you’ve downloaded the 701 ISO version from here, right?Â
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pandora/files/Pandora%20FMS%207.0NG/701/If afirmative, I’ll try to replicate the issue on your exact same version, since I tested it on a clean 7.0.
Kind regards,
Antonio. -
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Hello cgill,
I’ve tried to replicate the issue on a new 701 version and I’ve not been able to do it. See atached screenshot.
Could you describe the steps you followed to install the software? I need to find the circumstances when it happens in order to determine the cause.
Kind regards,
Antonio.
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Thanks, Antonio. We’re definitely on the same platform, our versions match. I just wiped out my test VM and rebuilt from scratch. Here’s the specific steps and behavior:
1) Log in to Pandora. Default agent for Pandora server itself exists.
2) Create new agent for ‘test-client-1’. Can correctly set parent to the Pandora server name.
3) Create new agent for ‘test-client-2’. Can correctly set parent to the Pandora server name.
4) Attempt to change test-client-2 parent from test-srv to test-client-1. This reports a success, but actually fails – parent is empty after update. -
Hello cgill,Â
Thanks to your indications I’ve been able to replicate the issue. It happens when going to set an agent with a “hash type” name as agent.Â
If you take a look at the table tagente  you will see it is not possible to set as parent of an agent a different agent with a hash on the column nombre  but if the value on that column is a standard name/ip or sth different than the hash, it is possible.
I’ve raised an internal ticket to our development team to fix this issue on the near future versions.
Kind regards,
Antonio. -
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