Some monitoring guys /

Hi,

This is our second online course, and we now installing the default shinken ui: WebUI.

You need a shinken 2.0 installation. For this just follow the first course :)

You can follow this tutorial with this video:

(You can also have a fr version of the video)

The WebUI interface is a broker daemon module. This daemon role is to grab and expose the monitoring data to the outside world with modules. One of this module is the WebUI interface.

Install the WebUI

We will use the shinken cli command to grab and install the webui module from shinken.io. It's quite easy, and remember, launch it as the shinken user.

shinken@debian# shinken search webui
auth-cfg-password (naparuba) [module,auth,authentification,webui] : Shinken module for UI authentification from simple password for configuration file
auth-htpasswd (naparuba) [module,webui,auth,authentification] : Shinken module for UI authentification from Apache passwd files
mod-mongodb (naparuba) [module,webui,arbiter,mongodb,mongo] : Module used for all mongodb connections, like for saving UI data, or loading configuration inside the Arbiter
sqlitedb (naparuba) [module,broker,sqlite,webui] : Generic module for others to export data into a Sqlite database
ui-graphite (naparuba) [module,broker,webui,graphite,graphs] : Enable Graphite graphs inside the WebUI
ui-pnp (naparuba) [module,broker,webui,pnp4nagios,graphs] : Enable PNP4Nagios graphs inside the WebUI
webui (naparuba) [module,broker,webui,interface] : Main Web interface for Shinken

We got numerous modules related to the webui one. First we install this last one :)

shinken@debian# shinken install webui   
Grabbing : webui
OK webui

This will download and untar some files:

• /var/lib/shinken/modules/webui/ : the module code (in Python), the pages and http ressources
• /etc/shinken/modules/webui.cfg: module configuration file

The WebUI configuration looks like:

define module {
  module_name     webui
  module_type     webui
  host            0.0.0.0
  port            7767
  auth_secret     CHANGE_ME
  allow_html_output   1
  max_output_length   1024
  manage_acl          1
  play_sound          0
  login_text          Welcome on Shinken WebUI
  modules
  #http_backend        auto
  #remote_user_enable      1
  #remote_user_variable
}

Let's have a look at the parameters:

• module_name : the name as a daemon should call it. Must be uniq
• module_type : the type of the module. Used by the daemon to know which python code to call :)
• host : the address to listen, 0.0.0.0 mans all interfaces
• port : port to listen. As this is launched by the shinken user you can't put 0 there sorry
• auth_secret : private key to build cookie. MUST be changed :)
• allow_html_output : by default the webui allow HTML from the outputs, if you fear security risks from there, just disable it.
• max_output_length : by default outputs are limited to 1024 characters
• manage_acl : should user only see elements that they are contacts of? :)
• play_sound : try to guess what it is :)
• login_text : little text that is shown above the login prompt
• modules : which modules does the webui must load. We will saw this later :)
• http_backend : which python http backend to load. By default wsgiref from vanilla python, but cherrypy is better if available :)
• remote_user_enable and remote_user_variable : if you set webui begind a reverse proxy that does the authentification

Let's just give a try if we add this WebUI module to the broker daemon. All we need to do is to is to add it into the modules of the broker configuration :

shinken@debian# cat /etc/shinken/brokers/broker-master.cfg
[...]
modules     webui
[...]

We can restart shinken and connect to the WebUI that will be availalbe on the 7767 port.

root@debian# /etc/init.d/shinken restart

We try to identify with the admin/admin account from our contact defined at :

shinken@debian# cat /etc/shinken/contacts/admin.cfg
define contact{
    use             generic-contact
    contact_name    admin
    email           shinken@localhost
    pager           0600000000   ; contact phone number
    password        admin
    is_admin        1
}

And we go... a big #fail :D

WebUI authentification

Why? It's because the WebUI authentification phase is managed by its auth modules, and we add none, so the webUI can't authentify us. Let's look at which auth modules are currently available:

shinken@debian# shinken search webui auth
auth-cfg-password (naparuba) [module,auth,authentification,webui] : Shinken module for UI authentification from simple password for configuration file
auth-htpasswd (naparuba) [module,webui,auth,authentification] : Shinken module for UI authentification from Apache passwd files
auth-active-directory (naparuba) [module,webui,auth,ldap] : Active directory auth for WebUI

One (cfg-password) is a simple auth by looking at the contact password value, another (htpasswd) is about checking the password in an apache htpawd file, and the last one (active-directory) is about checking the password with active directory (or openldap). We will take the first one for this course.

shinken@debian# shinken install auth-cfg-password

There is nothing to configure on the module (/etc/shinken/modules/auth_cfg_password.cfg) but we need to declare it on the WebUI configuration :

shinken@debian# grep modules /etc/shinken/modules/webui.cfg
modules             auth-cfg-password

Now we can restart shinken so this module wil be load by webui:

root@debian# /etc/init.d/shinken restart

This time the connexion is OK :)

In the All view you will get your localhost checks:

You will got nothing in the /impacts view, and it's normal, because this view is done to show you the important apps information, but we currently didn't defined one.

In the /dashboard we got a new error, with a BIG red screen:

User preference backend

The dasboard is specific to each user, and so WebUI must save your user preference (widgets and co). But this task should be managed by the modules (like if you want flat file save or in a distant database). You can choose to export all data into mongodb, but we will look at the simpliest one that save the data into a local sqlite file.

shinken@debian# shinken install sqlitedb
shinken@debian# cat /etc/shinken/modules/sqlitedb.cfg
define module {
    module_name     sqlitedb
    module_type     sqlitedb
    uri             /var/lib/shinken/webui.db
}

The default path should be ok, let's add this to the WebUI modules list:

shinken@debian# grep modules /etc/shinken/modules/webui.cfg
modules         auth-cfg-password,sqlitedb

And restart shinken:

root@debian# /etc/init.d/shinken restart

Now the /dashboard view is OK :)

After adding some widgets you will have such a screen:

That's all about today, now you can add new hosts and saw them in your WebUI :)

Note: if you don't modify modules you don't need to restart all the shinken daemons, you only need to restart the arbiter :

root@debian# /etc/init.d/shinken-arbiter restart

The next course

The next course will be about the 1.4 migration, and the next one about a first distributed installation :)

jean gabès