Welcome to the SNMAgent project page

Every environment needs good system maintenance, and the key is to have excellent tools for system monitoring, notification and trend analysis. In the open source marked the two tools I've found closest to the "excellent" mark is Nagios and Munin. Together they give all you need for the linux/unix servers. However win32 support is not natively supported by any of them. SNMAgent is an attempt to fill this gap.

About this document

This document is intended for developers of SNMAgent and the brave few who want to run it in production. Others may find the information useful.

Support

We cannot guaranty any kind of support for the SNMAgent. However you will most likely get a response from the munin mailing list or svenna@efnet. System spec and scope of the project may change drastically. Please be careful if you decide to put the SNMAgent in any kind of production environment.

Credits

Nagios is a stand-alone enterprise-class monitoring solution. Nagios does not recognize SNMAgent as valid Nagios project. See www.nagios.org.
Munin is a project driven by Linpro to give information of system performance/trends in graphs through a web interface. See munin.projects.linpro.no and SNMAgent documentation in the munin wiki.
NSClient is a win32 NT service for Nagios. NSClient is recommended in the Nagios FAQ as a Nagios Add-on for Windows. The NSClient source code is used in full for the SNMAgent project. The source is modified to compile with Delphi 2006, and support for Munin is built on top of the already working Nagios implementation. See http://nsclient.ready2run.nl.

Project status

Overview

The project will likely stay in a state of internal testing and proof-of-concept for a long while. However I've used the SNMAgent on production sites since June 2006 and several other people have deployments of SNMAgent on their server farm.

Nagios part of SNMAgent is working, there is not yet found any problems with the source modifications from the NSClient. Munin part of SNMAgent is able to talk to the Munin server and give system status. Some "Munin plugins" are supported by hard coded integration in the service. Some plugins can be configured to some extent; some are only in proof-of-concept stage and only working on developer machine or identical hardware.

Plugins

SNMAgent now support two types of "plugins", Internal and PerfData. SNMAgent enumers *.ini files in the plugins\ directory. Ini files specify the plugin to be internal or of type PerfData.

Plugins are detected at runtime. There is no need for restarting the nt service when changing or adding configuration files.

Internal

Internal plugins is hard-coded in the application, and now consists of two plugins.

df

Support config or fetch command.
SNMAgent will list and give % usage of all system drives if they are marked as dtFixed or dtRAM. Network, floppy, usb, dvd etc is filtered out.

Output from config command can be overwritten by placing a df.cfg file in etc\. User will then be fully responsible for compatibility with config and fetch output.

Sample df.cfg file:

graph_title File system usage (in %)
graph_args --upper-limit 100 -l 0
graph_vlabel %
graph_category disk
graph_info This graph shows disk usage on the machine.
disk_c.label c: (system)
disk_c.info c:
disk_c.warning 70
disk_c.critical 80
disk_d.label d: (media)
disk_d.info d:
disk_d.warning 70
disk_d.critical 80
disk_f.label f: (junk)
disk_f.info f:
disk_f.warning 70
disk_f.critical 80

cpu

Support config or fetch command.
SNMAgent will sample average cpu usage last 5 minutes and give percentage of total cpu usage for all cores last 5 minutes when invoked with fetch cpu
Plugins needs etc\cpu.cfg for output of config cpu.

PerfData

PerfData uses the .ini file to read mappings to the Windows Performance Monitor. Users can create custom .ini files, and i theory graph all data by using the Windows Performance Data Helper API (PDH). Some PDH plugins come pre-configured, with both .ini and matching etc\*.cfg files.

eth0

Proof of concept support for config and fetch command.
Lakes support for enumerating network hardware.
SNMAgent will output current in/out data of Network Interface(NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller - Packet Scheduler Miniport) pr sec. This can be altered by configuring your plugins\eth0.ini file
Plugins needs etc\eth0.cfg for output of config eth0.

memoio

Support config or fetch command.
Reports current memory pages/sec.
Plugins needs etc\memoio.cfg for output of config memio.

memcommit

Support config or fetch command.
Reports current commit limit, commit bytes and page file size.
Plugins needs etc\memcommit.cfg for output of config memcommit.

powerstate

Support config or fetch command.
Reports power state of CPU (C1, C2, C3).
Plugins needs etc\powerstate.cfg for output of config powerstate.

procs

Support config or fetch command.
Reports number of running procs/threads.
Plugins needs etc\procs.cfg for output of config procs.

handles

Support config or fetch command.
Reports number of active handles.
Plugins needs etc\handles.cfg for output of config handles.

cpunew

Support config or fetch command.
Consept test of fetching cpu usage, divided in idle, user, processor and interrupt.
Plugins needs etc\cpunew.cfg for output of config cpunew.
When the plugins works better i can replace the cpu plugin.

Installation

SNMAgent needs to be installed in a directory compatible for an NT Service. If running the service as system user this normally rules out mapped network drives etc. Also make sure the user is able to read the directory.
SNMAgent service creates parameters in HKLM\SOFTWARE\SNMAgent. The service needs to read this registry key. password and port is for the Nagios implementation of SNMAgent only.
The 3th parameter, "Path", is used for the Munin implementation of SNMAgent and must be present before starting the service. Currently the value is used to locate the etc\ folder. Value should not include a trailing slash.
Sample registry data:
```
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SNMAgent]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SNMAgent\Params]
"port"=dword:000004e0
"password"="None"
"Path"="D:\\Apps"
```
Active plugins should have a plugins\*.ini file.

note: The installer should take care of the above for you.

NT Service can be installed by running "snma.exe /install". If Inno Setup installer is used, you should find a shortcut for this on your Start Menu.
After installation the service can be started by running "net start snmagent", using windows gui or rebooting the computer.

Debugging

Debug mode is of by default, as of version 0.300.

You can set debug level with the registy key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\SNMAgent\Params\DebugLevel:REG_DWORD.

Debug Levels

Under installation and configuration you should set level 4, and change to 0 or 1 when you've beeen running stable for a while. You will need to restart the service for the changes to take effect.

0: Off (Default)
1: Critical errors and exceptions.
2: Nonfatal (likely) errors and warnings.
3: Warnings and notices.
4: Notices and information.

Changelog

v 0.300

System has been running on several production sites now. Only complaint has been the debug output to the event log. So this version introduces a registry setting for changing the debug mode and default is off.
Installer does not overwrite password, port and DebugLevel settings in the registry.

v 0.220

Strips '.00' from PerfMon data, to deal with rrd tool not liking floats in combination with DERIVE || COUNTER. It's really a quick'n dirty fix, but should do the trick.
Included several plugins from Moses Moore to graph MS Exchange Server. As with all the included plugins you should see them as samples that might need modification on your system.

v 0.210

Removed old handels.ini and handles.cfg files from the installer.
Redused output to the events log. (Removed much of the debug info)
Included a page file usage plugin.

v 0.200

Support for PerfData plugins.
Support for some plugin configuration, and PerData mapping by using plugins\*.ini files. You can now graph custom data trough the PDH api.
Removed Internal plugins for memio, eth0 and memcommit. Now replaced by PerfData plugins.
New pre-configured plugins: procs, powerstate, handles and cpunew.

v 0.100

Initial Release

Download

Please read above information to understand what you are downloading, no dedicated support will be given. Project is barely ready for production.