Glossary of terms

These are two types access granted to users, module components and alerts.

• Users with basic access will only be able to use the components and alerts of this level.
• Users with advanced access will be able to use components and alerts at any level.

On the other hand, the Advanced type components are more configurable than the Basic type:

• With the possibility of renaming them.
• They offer the configuration of the actions in the alerts. In the basic type, the alerts will be created with the default actions.
• More fields appear in your issue such as advanced fields. For example: units, macros in the case of local or network components of the plugin type, among others.

• Execution that is carried out when an alert is triggered.
• They can be parameterized through a series of fields.
• It is possible to execute several actions for a single alert.

• Determine user permissions.
• In Pandora FMS they are defined by assigning a user a profile over a group.

• The SLA is a negotiated agreement between two parties where one of them is the customer and the other is a service provider.
• In Pandora FMS the breach of an SLA is reported when any component is outside the values considered normal. It takes into account the data stored in the database, but not the status changes of the modules, so the configuration of the FF Threshold of the modules is not taken into account to calculate their SLA.
• In the presentation of reports, their reliability must also be defined to avoid problems, and also establish the prioritization mode (prioritization of the OK or prioritization of the a stranger).

An Agent in Pandora FMS is an organizational entity, usually a machine, system or host, which contains information from different checks called Modules, and belongs to a single group. It may be related to other agents (“parent-child”).

• Service installed on computers to collect local information.
• Stays running in the system to collect and send information from time to time, called an interval.
• The Software Agent generates XML data files and sends them to the assigned PFMS server using the default Tentacle protocol.

• It has two possible states: triggered or not triggered.
• Automatically perform actions such as sending email messages and other forms of notification.

With the Metaconsole module creation assistant (Wizard) it will be possible to create modules of different types in the Instances in a simple and transparent way, using the module components and the alert templates. In the Wizard the different instances are not distinguished. All agents and modules will appear mixed up as if they were from the same source.

• It is a set of data belonging to the same context and systematically stored for later use.
• Pandora FMS accesses this data set through a standard query structured language (SQL).

• They allow queries to be made to devices and computers through open ports.
• They are used in the Remote monitoring .

• They are TCP checks that use the SNMP protocol.

A command or order is an instruction that is carried out in an operating system, by request.tion of a user or by an application.

• Execution at system level carried out by the server when an alert is triggered.
• External commands or custom scripts can be used.
• See also “Alert structure”.

Commenting is the process of placing the parameter itself as a comment by adding the special character to the start of its line (or uncommenting, thus activating the parameter by removing the special character).

A component is a template to create a module.

Could be:

• Local.
• Network:
  • Network type.
  • Plugin type.
  • WMI type.

The Pandora FMS Console (Web Console) is the interface that allows you to manage PFMS through the browser.

A DAEMON (short for “Disk And Execution Monitor”) is a non-graphical interface program that runs at the operating system level with little or no interaction from users.

Set of files, generally compiled into machine language, with common functions that can be used by one or more applications in an operating system.

• Generally an update or upgrade contains improved components compared to the one it replaces, but sometimes there is a problem.
• For these unique cases, there is talk of a downgrade for return a PFMS server to the previous version installed.

Abbreviation to indicate Unix® and GNU/Linux® environments.

• NORMAL, WARNING and CRITICAL are the three possible states of a Module.
• The WARNING and CRITICAL states usually indicate error conditions of different severity.
• Pandora FMS allows you to independently define different thresholds for the WARNING and CRITICAL states of each module.

Status of a Module that has not received data for more than twice its interval.

• Any incident that occurs in monitored systems.
• The information it displays ranges from any change in the status of a module, alerts launched or recovered, to system reboots.

• When a check returns an error and this has not really occurred, we are talking about a false positive.
• When it does not return any error and it has occurred, we are talking about a false negative.

• Data files generated by Pandora FMS Software Agents.
• In addition to the information on the Agent modules, it contains information about the Agent itself (version, operating system, etc.).

Used in computing to describe the process of completely saving whatever is in RAM (data and/or running programs) to a fixed storage device by an operating system.

Normal installation of Pandora FMS configured to enable its access through the Metaconsole and optionally to replicate its events to the Metaconsole.

• It is used to define non-contiguous ranges in the thresholds.
• In string type modules, the threshold is defined as a substring.

It is the software that communicates the hardware with the rest of the software installed on a computer and constitutes the essence of an operating system.

• Used to refer to merging of source code, such as a new feature.
• It can also be applied to other similar processes such as merging two databases from different servers into a third server.

Web console that allows centralized management of many of the functions of the PFMS nodes (users, agents, etc.).

Provides detailed step-by-step process and parameter information when an application or operating system is running to make it easier to fix code exceptions (“errors”).

• A Module is a bound entitymica of information that stores numerical or alphanumeric/text type values.
• Each Module only stores data from an individual check (CPU, RAM, traffic…).
• The modules are contained within the agents, and always associated to a single Agent.
• An Agent in turn can contain multiple modules.

A module is asynchronous when it returns data based on changes or events, which may or may not occur. In these cases we then speak of asynchronous monitoring.

We say that a module is synchronous when it returns data at regular intervals. For example, a temperature measurement every 5 minutes.

• It is a simultaneous appearance, generally minimized and on the same plane, of different documents or parts of them.
• Used in the GIS Console (Geographic Information System).

Set of applications that allow encrypted communications over a network, using the SSH protocol.

PWRD provides the necessary tools to automate web browsing sessions for later monitoring with WUX.

A package contains a program or its suite packaged in a certain format ready to be installed on a certain operating system and version.

• Defines the permissions on the different possible operations in Pandora FMS: view an Agent, modify it, assign alerts, etc.
• Profiles are associated with users for certain groups.

It specifies the trigger conditions for the alert, which may depend on the value or status of a Module, and other details such as the maximum number of times that it will be triggered in a given interval or an operating hour range.

It is the consultation process on a regular basis and via SNMP from PFMS to the monitored devices.

• FlipFlop (FF) is known as a usual phenomenon in monitoring: when a value oscillates frequently between alternative values (BAD/GOOD) that make its interpretation difficult.
• The flip flop protection of a Module indicates the number of times the state change condition must occur for the state change to occur.
• This allows to protect a Module from false positives/negatives.

• Log rotation (log rotation) is an automated process used in system administration in which log files are compressed, moved (archived), renamed, or deleted
• New incoming log data is directed to a new file, usually in the same location.

• The PFMS server processes the information, collected in different ways.
• Run alerts, apply policies and send the information to the database.
• The Pandora FMS server also contains different components that perform their own functions (eg Data server) and can be enabled or disabled depending on the needs.

Server that is on the network and is not the local server.

Interface that allows the introduction of commands on a machine through the keyboard.

Native software or native data formats are those that were designed to run and/or process on a particular operating system.

As in GNU/Linux there is a superuser named root , in Pandora FMS there is also a superuser named superadmin:

• When installing a full PFMS server, by default, two users are included: admin and internal_API.
• This admin user is the first superadmin but not the only one.
• In addition to superadmin, administrator users can be created in Pandora FMS, through the PM access bit.
• Users with PM bit are practically the same as a super administrator, with the exception that, for example, they cannot create Alert Commands, and other limitations, such as not being able to define other users as superadmin.

Version control system that keeps a repository with the different versions of the files that make up a project throughout its life.

Like a package, it contains a program or set of programs packaged in TAR format, but unlike this one it does not contain information on how to install it and in principle they are not specific for a given operating system.

It is the data transfer protocol used by the Software Agents and the Satellite Server to send data to the Pandora FMS server.

Tentacle is cross-platform and uses port 41121 (assigned by IANA) by default.

Minimum or maximum value of a module from which a change of state occurs.

It is the time interval in which the restrictions defined when configuring the alert template apply.

In *nix environments is the user dedicated to the administration of an operating system, with special privileges to install, configure and maintain the software, among other tasks. Other users can inherit these privileges if they belong to the same root user group.

Within Pandora FMS there is a functionality that verifies if a system is running and if it is down, it restarts it.

• A graphical widget provides a single point of interaction for direct manipulation of a given type of data.
• Any widget displays a user-modifiable arrangement of information, such as a window or text box.
• Combined in one application, they house all the data processed by the same and the interactions available on this data.

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