Node-Runner Network Monitoring

I had been using a quick and dirty perl based network monitor called penemo for some of my clients sites. Now mind you this is not mission critical Tivoli type monitoring and correlation, just a way for me to stay ahead of my clients. Recently the penemo developers site has lapsed so I thought I would try a new project.

I was looking for something new, and came across node-runner. It is php based, has web based configuration and reporting screens, and uses MySQL as a back end.

The installation scripts did not work for me, but the README and INSTALL files have all of the manual steps to handle the work. I found that when installing node-runner it is best to keep the basic file structure intact in a /usr/local/node-runner directory. This means keep etc, include, contribs, sql all under here.

I had tried to split the stc stuff into /usr/local/etc, but never got that running right.

Then you move the web files to the server, and create a cron job for the php polling application, edit the conf files with the proper path locations and you should be good to go.

The application seems to be running well, php strict generates a bunch of errors about variables that are not initialized but nothing that halts operation.

It has options for mailing groups for outage notifications, options to add users, and the ability to check servers using ICMP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, and SNMP. I have only tried HTTP, ICMP, and TCP to date, but have had no issues.

I will keep you updated.

Till Next Time,

Sean Riley
President, DogRiley