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As I started to deploy BixAgent from BixData widely, I built an easy way to install the software on remote/local machines. The usual way to install BixAgent is to install the Apple Developer tools, upgrade the tools, download bixagent, compile and then run it. There is a good article around here.

You may get bixagent from here at bixdata site or the package I made to deploy easily the agent. With the package, there is no need to compile or configure. It still possible to configure it if you want. It installs bixagent with ssl enabled and credentials already set. Credentials are set in the installation process/documentations.

I use the package to deploy it through Apple Remote Desktop on machines. It is fairly easy and fast to install and enable that machine to be monitored with BixServer and BixDesktop.

Note: There was a mistake with the previous release of the package.

Here I am again with a problem to solve. I’ve become problem solver to my self-created problems. Duh. Now what I need to solve is regarding a new monitoring software recently ported to Mac os X. It’s been one month now that BixData ported their suite, BixAgent; BixServer; BixDesktop, to my platform of predilection.

BixData’s suite let you monitor servers, services, processes, S.M.A.R.T. status, etc. as easy as if there was only one machine to look for. BixServer, the engine behind BixData product, is powered by a Mysql server and let you able to manage everything within a nice interface. BixDesktop is that graphical interface that you might use to configure machines, watched services, servers, processes, notification setup or what else I might forget. At last but not least, BixAgent may be installed on remote machine you want to monitor processes, ram usage, disk status etc.

The product is very young so it turns out unstable and you quickly realize that maybe this is a good product but, you don’t have that much time to wait for it to get aged. Being young doesn’t mean that it’s not good. Myself for example, I’m 22 years old and I don’t like to think I’m worthless. So I gave few shots at BixData and worked with those guys to make it a better product. I guest I was looking to over book my already full schedule with it. keep busy.

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If you are all about making decisions backed by numbers and statistics, you must get Cacti on your organization. Cacti is a PHP front end that uses mysql and rrdtool in the back end to store and generate graphics.

This short article is all about the mechanism that drives Cacti, how to install and how to use it.
If you don’t know what Cacti is yet, read that link.

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Keeping track on a Unix based system of what users are doing is imperative. Lots of software/freeware are available to serve you right with this. After a friend of mine asked me how could he make sure no one hacked his server, I did a little investigation. Here is the story.

Everything starts with a weird message from a watchdog saying that someone logged in the server as usual but at a not so usual hour. After spending lots of time scavenging the log folder with all those system and security logs, I noticed a weird choke on the log rotation sequence. There were a complete 24 hours missing. Log rotation is based on 24 hours rotation so i found one of my rotated log file: empty. That range of 24 hours starts few minutes before the “intrusion”, weird isn’t.

So what. Maybe there were a bug in log-rotate. Well I wasn’t stupid enough to let that weirdness blind my concern.

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As part of my reinstallation that is going on, I need to reconfigure the SNMP service on the new machine. I use SNMP to monitor stuff. Basically, I use tools, such as Cacti, to pull data out of those snmp-enable device and create reports. Those reports could be from ping latency, to incoming mail rate or to S.M.A.R.T. hard drive temperature. For those of you who doesn’t know what SNMP is, read the reference link at the bottom if that post.

If you’re getting excited when you see monitoring charts and graphs of a web site, you’re the candidate for a good SNMP book. There is one thing you should know about SNMP is that it IS the ultimate monitoring tool and it goes for everything. SNMP is light, powerful, and runs on anything with a chip. If there is a toaster that has an ethernet card, that toaster would probably be SNMP compatible. Get to it.

In that post, I’ll be explaining how to configure SNMP on Mac os x Server, how to secure it and how to validate your informations and settings.

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