Mathieu Gagné wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Some of us are under the impression that Merlin and Ninja will be the
> new default GUI and NEB module used in Nagios.
>
> I therefore gave a try to both of them this week and I would like to
> share my impression and opinion about those.
>
Very nice
After working with Ninja and Merlin for most of this year I have to say
I'm really happy to see that people are interested and actually succeed
to get as far as "working" installations at this early stage.
If anyone want to take a look at Ninja without the hazzle of doing a pre
beta installation we have a system that does a 'yum update' once every
hour, installing rpm's built from the latest commits.
https://beta.op5.com/ninja/
login: monitor
password: monitor
> Lets start with Merlin.
>
> 1) Lack of documentation
>
> There's a serious lack of documentation about the project making it
> difficult for anyone to join and test Merlin.
>
ok,
Current existing project documentation can be found at
http://www.op5.org/community/projects/merlin, there is information,
brief but still information about the project and how you can join and
test Merlin. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but you're not
completely left alone at least.
> 1.1. We should be explained the terminology used by Merlin
>
> What is a NOC, Poller and Peer? What are they in the big picture and how
> do they interact with each others?
>
>
Have you checked out the README file in the git repo? It should cover
what you're asking for.
> 1.2) We should be provided examples of setup
>
> How can Merlin be configured and used? Clear working examples should be
> provided, including schema and network information (hostname/ip).
>
> Over the years, I tend to be more and more a visual person. The backend
> illustration is nice (http://www.op5.org/community/projects/merlin) but
> not enough for me to understand how can multiple Merlin enabled Nagios
> can interact with each others and what I should be expecting from them.
>
>
I agree with you, we have not come this far yet. Right now the only
thing available is the above mentioned illustration. Now when I think of
it I actually have an old pdf describing a couple of possible setups as
well, I'l try to shape it up and get it published. We also have an
example.conf but I think we should provide a couple of more example
config files just like Nagios Core does.
> 1.3) Configuration propagation
>
> - How is it propagated? Do I have to rsync them? Is it propagated or
> just imported to the database for status aggregation purpose?
>
It's not propagated at all so yes you have to rsync them. It would
though be very nice if this were handled by Merlin in some nice way, I
know I for one would like that.
> - How does Merlin deal with name collisions? Does it assume "localhost"
> from "nagios1" is the same as the one on "nagios2"?
>
>
Since it's not responsible for the "configuration propagation layer" at
this moment it does not handle name collisions either and just assumes
it's the same host.
> All those questions would probably be answered if real life examples
> were provided.
>
yep
> 1.4) Nagios instance
>
> Was the NDOutils concept of "nagios instance" dropped? I can see this in
> object_importer.inc.php:
>
> $obj['instance_id'] = 0;
> $obj['instance_name'] = 'Local Nagios/Merlin instance';
>
>
yes, for now at least. If it makes sense in the future we might
reintroduce it.
> 2) Installation process to be improved
>
> The installation process isn't trouble free.
>
> I installed a MySQL server on a remote host. There's unfortunately no
> way to tell the install script to use a remote MySQL server. It assumes
> MySQL is installed on the local host and can authenticate using the
> password-less root account. We should be given a choice and asked
> authentication informations. (host,port,user,pass)
>
I agree
> 3) Using PHP for shell scripts
>
> I used to program PHP for several years in the past. PHP is nice and
> easy to learn. However having to install PHP on a monitoring server just
> so a single shell
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