NAME¶
smokeping_upgrade - Notes on upgrading Smokeping
OVERVIEW¶
This document tries to list incompatible or otherwise user-visible changes in
Smokeping versions, with instructions on how to fix any possible problems. It
also sporadically mentions new features and the like.
The document currently starts with changes from 1.34 to 1.37. If you run into
problems with upgrading from earlier versions, please send a description of
the problems, preferably with notes on how to fix them, to the
"smokeping-users" mailing list, so they can be added to this
document. The same applies to any problems you find with current versions that
are not documented here, of course. Patch submissions against the POD source
of this file are most appreciated.
If a version is not listed, there are no known problems in upgrading to it from
the previous release.
An official list of changes with each release can be found in the CHANGES file
in the Smokeping distribution. This document tries to complement that with
upgrading instructions etc.
2.4.2 to 2.4.3¶
To fix zooming for FF3.5 I prototype and scriptaculous have been updated. To
complete the fix you have to update your basepage.html too and include effects
in the scriptaculous load line
cropper/lib/scriptaculous.js?load=builder,effects,dragdrop
2.3.6 to 2.4.0¶
The new SmokeTrace tool was added to SmokePing. For setup instructions read the
smoketrace manual page.
2.3.3 to 2.3.4¶
The communication protocol between master and slave has been made more secure.
This requires that BOTH master and slave are upgraded to continue working.
2.2.x to 2.3.x¶
2.3.0 is mainly about new features. Check out the reference documentation on
hierarchies and the target properties
parents,
hidden and
nomasterpoll.
The only thing you have to take a look at, is the file
basepage.html.dist
which got some new css properties. Without them the results of the new filter
function will look quite bad.
2.1.x to 2.2.0¶
LWP Dependency¶
The new master/slave functionality needs the LWP::UserAgent module from CPAN.
Currently the dependency is not optional; you'll need the module even if you
are only running one Smokeping instance.
2.0.9 to 2.1.0¶
Echoping 6 support¶
This is the first Smokeping version that fully supports echoping 6. Earlier
versions of the EchoPingHttp probes don't work with echoping 6 because of a
command line incompatibility. (Echoping 5 is still supported, of course.)
This version also introduces three new probes using the new echoping plugin
interface introduced in version 6:
- •
- EchoPingDNS
- •
- EchoPingLDAP
- •
- EchoPingWhois
See the smokeping_examples document for simple examples of using these probes.
New method in base.pm (if you write your own probes)¶
The
base.pm module defines the method ProbeUnit. Override this if your
Probe does not return 'Seconds'. See the
FTPtransfer.pm for
inspiration.
2.0.8 to 2.0.9¶
FPing¶
The 'timeout' variable removed in 2.0.5 has been brought back. It is used to
give the "fping" command the "-t" parameter, which
apparently affects the timeout of the last ping in the counting
("-C") mode used by Smokeping.
2.0.5 to 2.0.6¶
CGI self-referring links (again)¶
The way Smokeping creates the self-referring links was changed once more. See
the section under '2.0.4 to 2.0.5' for a description of the previous change.
The behaviour is now customizable via the "linkstyle" variable in the
"General" section of the configuration file. The default is now
"relative", creating links like
<a href="?foo=bar">. I hope this works for everybody,
but if it doesn't, see smokeping_config for the alternatives.
2.0.4 to 2.0.5¶
FPing¶
The 'timeout' variable has been removed. It was used to give the
"fping" command the "-t" parameter, but as this parameter
is only effective in "fping"'s
default mode, while Smokeping
uses the
counting mode ("-c"), it never actually did
anything.
CGI self-referring links¶
The way Smokeping creates the self-referring links was changed. The old
behaviour used the script name but not the host part, resulting in links like
<a href="/path/smokeping.cgi?foo=bar">. The new
behaviour uses the "cgiurl" variable: the links are always absolute
like
<a href="
http://some.host/path/smokeping.cgi?foo=bar">.
2.0.1 to 2.0.2¶
Edge-triggered alerts¶
The alert notifications can now optionally be sent only when the state of the
alert changes. This means that only the first match of the alert generates a
notification, subsequent matches don't. When the alert is cleared, ie. there's
no match anymore, another notification is sent.
This behaviour is enabled by the "edgetrigger" variable in the
"Alerts" section. The old behaviour (which sends a notification on
each match) is the default.
1.40 to 2.0¶
The biggest change with the 2.0 release is that the configuration file is now
parsed much more strictly. This should result in (hopefully understandable)
error messages making the configuration less of the trial-and-error variety
than it used to be. It also automates the generation of the configuration
documentation from the source code, so the docs are now more accurate.
A smaller change worth mentioning is the inclusion of the tSmoke script
(contributed by Dan McGinn-Combs) for sending summary emails on daily and
weekly system status. Note that it needs the new 'tmail' variable to be
defined in the config file.
CONFIGURATION¶
The configuration syntax has stayed mostly the same, except for the issues
below.
- PROBE_CONF
- The PROBE_CONF subsections have been deprecated. All the target-specific
variables are now configured in the same section as the target is. Just
deleting the
++ PROBE_CONF
lines should fix this (for any number of '+', obviously.)
The existence of a PROBE_CONF section makes smokeping exit with an error
message at parse time.
Note for distributors: these lines could easily be removed automatically
during upgrade.
- Variable order
- The "probe" variable must now be set before any variables that
depend on the selected probe. This is because setting "probe"
modifies the grammar of the rest of the section dynamically at parse time.
Additionally, "probe" must now precede "host", for
reasons that have to do with the current implementation of mandatory
variable checking.
Both of these errors are recognized at parse time and produce error messages
accordingly.
Note for distributors: the "smokeping" command now has a new
'--check' option that can be used to verify the syntax of the
configuration file. It might be a good idea to do this on upgrade and give
the user an explanatory note if the verification fails.
- Target-specific variables in the Probes section
- This is not an incompatible change, but it is mentioned here nevertheless.
Target-specific variables can now be specified in the Probes section as
well, and the values given become defaults for all the targets.
- Timeouts
- The "timeout" variable in the Probes section is now the maximum
time expected for one ping to take. Previously it was the maximum
time allowed for all the pings to one target. This is an incompatible
change, but the code now works in the way it was documented to work even
in 1.38.
Those probes offering a target-specific "timeout" variable will
get a default for it from the Probes section, as noted in the previous
item. This should ensure that probes that enforce the ping timeout
themselves (most do) will not get killed due to timeout before they have a
chance to do it.
- Matchers
- The matcher modules have been renamed to start with a capital letter, to
differentiate the actual modules from the base classes. You have to
capitalize the matcher name in the pattern definition accordingly.
- Minimum number of pings
- The "pings" variable now has an enforced minimum value of 3, as
the whole design of Smokeping is based on the idea of sending several
probes and measuring and visualizing the variation between them.
- RRD parameter checking
- Smokeping now checks at startup that the parameters of any existing RRD
files match those specified in the configuration file. If there is a
discrepancy, it will try to fix the situation and refuse to start if it
can't.
This situation is most likely to happen if you have modified the
"pings" variable in your configuration file. You'll then have to
delete the old RRD file or somehow convert it to use the new parameters.
The "rrdtune" command might be helpful here.
- Configurable location for DYNAMIC-related files
- There is now a new configuration variable, "dyndir", that can be
used to specify the location of the DYNAMIC-related files (.adr and
.snmp). These files used to be kept under "datadir" along with
the RRD files, but since they need to be writable by the web server, it
may be useful to separate these.
If "dyndir" is not specified, Smokeping will use the
"datadir" value as the default. This should ensure that no
existing setups will break.
In addition to this, some probes have had minor incompatible changes to their
configuration.
- RemoteFPing
- The "rbinary" variable is now mandatory. This is a side effect
from a bigger change: the probe is now derived from the FPing probe and
supports all the variables FPing does.
- FPing6
- This probe is also now derived from FPing and supports all the variables
FPing does.
- Curl
- The URL that will be used is now specified with the variable
"urlformat" instead of "url". The new variable can
(and usually should) include a placeholder for the "host"
variable of each target as "%host%", eg. "urlformat =
http://%host%/". The new variable is mandatory.
The change was made to fix the confusing situation where the
"host" variable was required for each actual target, but it
didn't actually have any effect (as the server to be probed came from the
"url" variable.)
Timeouts are now recognized properly by looking at the curl exit code. The
default timeout of this probe has been raised to 10 seconds.
The command line is now executed without an intervening /bin/sh, and so
quotes are not needed anymore around the User-Agent string (the
"agent" parameter). Smokeping will complain if it notices quotes
around the string.
Any extra arguments for "curl" can now be specified in the
"extraargs" variable.
- EchoPingHttp
- The default timeout of this probe has been raised to 10 seconds.
- EchoPingHttps
- The default timeout of this probe has been raised to 10 seconds.
- EchoPingIcp
- The "url" variable is now mandatory, as the old default
"/" didn't make sense because it's relative rather than
absolute.
- LDAP
- The "filter" variable is now mandatory, as Net::LDAP bails out
without it.
The "sleeptime" variable was changed to "mininterval"
and its semantics were changed accordingly (it's now the minimum time
between two queries rather than the time slept between the end of one and
the start of the another.)
- Radius
- The "sleeptime" variable was changed to "mininterval"
and its semantics were changed accordingly. See the LDAP explanation
above.
- AnotherDNS
- The "sleeptime" variable was changed to "mininterval"
and its semantics were changed accordingly. See the LDAP explanation
above. Additionally, the time is now specified in seconds rather than
microseconds.
- AnotherSSH
- The "sleeptime" variable was changed to "mininterval"
and its semantics were changed accordingly. See the LDAP explanation
above. Additionally, the time is now specified in seconds rather than
microseconds.
- TelnetIOSPing
- The name of this probe was changed: it now starts with a capital letter
like all the others do.
The "target" variable was removed. The target should now be
specified in the "host" variable, like it is with all the other
probes.
CGI::Carp module version¶
The recommended version for CGI::Carp is now at least 1.24, included in
CGI.pm-2.82 and the Perl standard distribution starting from 5.8.1. See the
smokeping_install document.
1.38 to 1.40¶
- The new navigation feature
- The big visible difference between 1.38 and 1.40 is the new browser
navigation feature: when clicking on the graphs in detail view you can
select different time ranges for the graph. The creation of this feature
has been sponsored by BeverlyCorp.com.
1.34 to 1.37¶
- The RemoteFPing probe
- The configuration of this probe was moved from the Targets section to the
Probes section, as all the variables are really probe-specific. The moved
variables were "rhost", "rbinary" and
"rhost".
- Logging changes
- The "smokeping" daemon now warns at startup if syslog support is
not turned on in the config file. This is because many diagnostic messages
will otherwise get lost.
- Concurrent probes
- Each probe now runs in its own process, instead of them all running
sequentially in one process. This makes it possible to specify different
step lengths for different probes. You can get the old behaviour back by
setting 'concurrentprobes = no'.
COPYRIGHT¶
Copyright 2005 by Niko Tyni.
LICENSE¶
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass
Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
AUTHOR¶
Niko Tyni <ntyni@iki.fi>
SEE ALSO¶
The other Smokeping documents, especially smokeping_config.