Hi all.
I am having an issue and quite frankly would rather not spend the entire next two days learning the entire snmp program. I am hoping someone out there has used MRTG and SNMP to make it work.
I have both installed. Single server, polling itself.
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run once so I can get OID and MIBs from it?
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the required OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name of it? There are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of them require an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it only look on my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in MRTG using all sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
Any help appreciated. I will post the final solution to how to configure snmp and mrtg to work on centos5.2 when I finally figure it out so no one else has to take all week to do so!!!
Whoo hoo!!!
Bob Hoffman wrote:
While it is somewhat outdated, MRTG itself is outdated as well, I wrote a howto for MRTG about 5-6 years ago -
http://howto.aphroland.org//HOWTO/MRTG/
(I haven't maintained it in years, and have no real plans to update the site again in the future)
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run once so I can get OID and MIBs from it?
If your wanting to collect data using SNMP then anything your collecting data from must be running a SNMP daemon. MRTG is fully capable of executing scripts to gather data as well.
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the required OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name of it? There are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of them require an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Defines "needs to use", mrtg comes with a tool called 'cfgmaker' which will scan any SNMP target and automatically generate a configuration for all of the network interfaces it can find on the target. You can then use mrtg against that config file to gather stats.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it only look on my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
You can add a iptables firewall rule to reject packets destined to your SNMP server (161/udp) unless they come over the loopback interface.
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in MRTG using all sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
In the example above crazyguy33 is the SNMP community string assigned to the system(configured in snmpd.conf). By default the read-only string is public. You can set it to anything you want.
Any help appreciated. I will post the final solution to how to configure snmp and mrtg to work on centos5.2 when I finally figure it out so no one else has to take all week to do so!!!
You may want to look into using cacti or some other tool instead, MRTG has some pretty severe limitations. Cacti uses RRDTool as it's back end, RRDTool is more or less the successor to MRTG and was initially released I think about 10 years ago, to give an idea how old MRTG is.
I still use MRTG on my home network, though mostly because it's legacy shit that I setup 7 years ago and haven't moved to cacti yet, it slowly breaking down as time goes on since I'm not maintaining it anymore.
nate
nate wrote:
Bob Hoffman wrote:
While it is somewhat outdated, MRTG itself is outdated as well,
indeed, RRDTOOL is the new MRTG. and Cacti, which is a web wrapper for it.
Thanks for the input..now that I have really been reading...I find that MRTG, or any of those programs is easy...
It is snmp that requires the college degree. I just ordered 2 books on it.
There is no way to poll the hardware without extensive knowledge of snmp. The man pages are horrendous and some are outdated. Obviously you need to know how to build and manage MIBs so you can then call to them with MRTG or the other programs.
So...
Needless to say, MRTG is now off as is snmp. I think this will be one of those 'maybe next year when I can learn all about acessing hardware like an engineer' and all.
I will just do some light reading with the books and maybe in the future I will figure out how to make mibs so I can grab them.
That is the issue, not mrtg, it is snmp.
One of those fun linux user things...I want to use this program..okay, easy...but you need a college degree in 'this program' to access the first one..
Ugh...
I'll just stick with webalizer and top for keeping tabs on the network. Then in the future, if I persue the degree in snmp and learn all about MIBs, I will check out the program.
Wish I had the last two days back...what a complete waste.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of nate Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 10:17 PM To: centos@centos.org Subject: Re: [CentOS] SNMP and OID/MIB/MRTG
Bob Hoffman wrote:
While it is somewhat outdated, MRTG itself is outdated as well, I wrote a howto for MRTG about 5-6 years ago -
http://howto.aphroland.org//HOWTO/MRTG/
(I haven't maintained it in years, and have no real plans to update the site again in the future)
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run
once so I
can get OID and MIBs from it?
If your wanting to collect data using SNMP then anything your collecting data from must be running a SNMP daemon. MRTG is fully capable of executing scripts to gather data as well.
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the
required
OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name
of it? There
are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of
them require
an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Defines "needs to use", mrtg comes with a tool called 'cfgmaker' which will scan any SNMP target and automatically generate a configuration for all of the network interfaces it can find on the target. You can then use mrtg against that config file to gather stats.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it
only look on
my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
You can add a iptables firewall rule to reject packets destined to your SNMP server (161/udp) unless they come over the loopback interface.
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in
MRTG using all
sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
In the example above crazyguy33 is the SNMP community string assigned to the system(configured in snmpd.conf). By default the read-only string is public. You can set it to anything you want.
Any help appreciated. I will post the final solution to how to configure snmp and mrtg to work on centos5.2 when I finally
figure it
out so no one else has to take all week to do so!!!
You may want to look into using cacti or some other tool instead, MRTG has some pretty severe limitations. Cacti uses RRDTool as it's back end, RRDTool is more or less the successor to MRTG and was initially released I think about 10 years ago, to give an idea how old MRTG is.
I still use MRTG on my home network, though mostly because it's legacy shit that I setup 7 years ago and haven't moved to cacti yet, it slowly breaking down as time goes on since I'm not maintaining it anymore.
nate
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hi,
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 22:55, Bob Hoffman bob@bobhoffman.com wrote:
Needless to say, MRTG is now off as is snmp. I think this will be one of those 'maybe next year when I can learn all about acessing hardware like an engineer' and all.
You can actually use MRTG without SNMP, specially if you are plotting graphs for the local machine only, by using the backticks feature of MRTG. You can actually write shell commands or scripts that gather the numbers, using commands such as netstat, ifconfig, df, vmstat, iostat, etc., and use them inside `...` inside your MRTG config file. I used to do it to get information from data collected through BigBrother monitoring system, the same can also be done with Nagios.
But if you are looking into implementing a graphing solution, you should probably look into a more modern tool, since MRTG is quite outdated and it has several shortcomings (only integer values, only two datasets per graph, etc.) I would recommend you look into Cacti or Munim, since those are simpler and more featurefull than MRTG. Oh, and both have their own data collecting agents, so you don't have to mess with SNMP to make it work. This is not always good, me, for instance, I prefer to collect all my data using SNMP, as I can use the same protocol to gather data from Unix machines, Windows machines, network switches, VPN concentrators, Environment Monitoring Systems, UPSs, and so on. But for what you want, I believe Cacti or Munim (and certainly other similar systems) would be quite appropriate.
HTH, Filipe
Hi,
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 21:46, Bob Hoffman bob@bobhoffman.com wrote:
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run once so I can get OID and MIBs from it?
Yes, it has to be running as a daemon.
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the required OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name of it? There are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of them require an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Well, the OIDs that you will use on MRTG's config will depend on what you want MRTG to trace. Is it the network traffic? Is it the disk usage? Is it the CPU usage? Free memory? You can get MRTG to trace any of that by using the specific OIDs. You can use the "snmpwalk" program to see all the information that the daemon will have to offer in order to choose what you want to plot.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it only look on my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
Yes, you can restrict snmpd to answer only to the localhost. I suggest you start with a /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf that contains this line only:
rocommunity MySecretString 127.0.0.1
Replace "MySecretString" with a secret string not known to others, this string is what is called "community" in snmp-speak. This way, snmpd will answer only to queries made from the localhost, and only to someone who knows the right "community" secret string (like a password).
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in MRTG using all sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
This is probably the community and the host. As I suggested restricting to localhost only, you will probably want to use something like "MySecretString@localhost", obviously replacing "MySecretString" with the one you chose.
The CentOS Wiki also has resources on MRTG, I suggest you look there as well: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/MRTG
HTH! Filipe
From what I read in the man pages about snmpwalk....and the snmp.conf file,
I had better take a very long course in configuration of snmp before I fiddle with it.
At least now I know why there is not 'walk through' online showing you how to do this...all of them nimbly 'skip' over the whole process of getting the MIB and just insert this 'mysterious' info into the tutorial...
Gotta love it.
I do promise you all, that I will learn snmp as I think it could be an important tool for a wsystem admin. Once I get it down, at least the basics, I will post a very detailed how to on it and hopefully others can use it without spending months on leanring hardware engineering.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Filipe Brandenburger Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 10:23 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] SNMP and OID/MIB/MRTG
Hi,
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 21:46, Bob Hoffman bob@bobhoffman.com wrote:
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run
once so I
can get OID and MIBs from it?
Yes, it has to be running as a daemon.
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the
required
OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name
of it? There
are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of
them require
an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Well, the OIDs that you will use on MRTG's config will depend on what you want MRTG to trace. Is it the network traffic? Is it the disk usage? Is it the CPU usage? Free memory? You can get MRTG to trace any of that by using the specific OIDs. You can use the "snmpwalk" program to see all the information that the daemon will have to offer in order to choose what you want to plot.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it
only look on
my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
Yes, you can restrict snmpd to answer only to the localhost. I suggest you start with a /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf that contains this line only:
rocommunity MySecretString 127.0.0.1
Replace "MySecretString" with a secret string not known to others, this string is what is called "community" in snmp-speak. This way, snmpd will answer only to queries made from the localhost, and only to someone who knows the right "community" secret string (like a password).
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in
MRTG using all
sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
This is probably the community and the host. As I suggested restricting to localhost only, you will probably want to use something like "MySecretString@localhost", obviously replacing "MySecretString" with the one you chose.
The CentOS Wiki also has resources on MRTG, I suggest you look there as well: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/MRTG
HTH! Filipe _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
You know...it would be nice to write a program that would use snmp to just scan through the local computer, grab OIDs...and then ask you which ones you wanted to make MIBs with.
Then you could just grab those with the graphing programs. I think that would be an awesome tool to build for linux.
-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On Behalf Of Filipe Brandenburger Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 10:23 PM To: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] SNMP and OID/MIB/MRTG
Hi,
On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 21:46, Bob Hoffman bob@bobhoffman.com wrote:
Question 1- does snmpd have to run as a daemon, or only run
once so I
can get OID and MIBs from it?
Yes, it has to be running as a daemon.
Question 2- does anyone know the command in snmp to get the
required
OID and MIBs that MRTG needs to use? Or at least the name
of it? There
are a lot of poorly written man pages, but so far all of
them require
an MIB or OID to use the commands I have read.
Well, the OIDs that you will use on MRTG's config will depend on what you want MRTG to trace. Is it the network traffic? Is it the disk usage? Is it the CPU usage? Free memory? You can get MRTG to trace any of that by using the specific OIDs. You can use the "snmpwalk" program to see all the information that the daemon will have to offer in order to choose what you want to plot.
Question 3- since not going outside of the server, is there any security setting in some snmp config file that makes it
only look on
my local server and not allow others to use it or hack it?
Yes, you can restrict snmpd to answer only to the localhost. I suggest you start with a /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf that contains this line only:
rocommunity MySecretString 127.0.0.1
Replace "MySecretString" with a secret string not known to others, this string is what is called "community" in snmp-speak. This way, snmpd will answer only to queries made from the localhost, and only to someone who knows the right "community" secret string (like a password).
Question 4- all over the internet there are examples in
MRTG using all
sorts of made up names like 'crazyguy33@servername' and things like that for the cfg file. And alsoin the snmp forum posts, but no one really talks about where this name comes from other than it is assigned to your network device or something.
This is probably the community and the host. As I suggested restricting to localhost only, you will probably want to use something like "MySecretString@localhost", obviously replacing "MySecretString" with the one you chose.
The CentOS Wiki also has resources on MRTG, I suggest you look there as well: http://wiki.centos.org/TipsAndTricks/MRTG
HTH! Filipe _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Bob Hoffman wrote:
You know...it would be nice to write a program that would use snmp to just scan through the local computer, grab OIDs...and then ask you which ones you wanted to make MIBs with.
Then you could just grab those with the graphing programs. I think that would be an awesome tool to build for linux.
It's not exactly free and it's not web based, but this is a pretty good tool, I plan to buy it pretty soon(been using the free version off and on for a while now. though it's limited).
http://www.ireasoning.com/mibbrowser.shtml
I've been digging quite a bit deeper into SNMP the past couple months at my new company monitoring hundreds of stats from our network equipment, and having the mibbrowser is really really helpful. No way I could of done most of it without it. My cacti system collects more than 10 million data points a day, on one dual proc quad core box. More than 95% of the stuff I put into cacti comes from scripts I wrote(I write the scripts to gather many data points simultaneously to reduce the amount of RRD data files stored improving performance by more than 10x.)
If someone knows of a better MIB browser I'd certainly be open to checking it out, having looked around quite a bit the past couple years I haven't found anything better myself that runs on Linux.
I certainly do agree that SNMP is a black art, not sure why it is so complicated, perhaps it just helps to sell those $100k enterprise monitoring packages because there's little hope for the average admin to figure out how to do it on their own.
At my current job(started in March), before I came on they were telling me how the previous admin setup CPU monitoring in cacti, and yet the CPU graphs never seemed to go above 25%. They weren't aware that the CPU usage reported by the snmp daemon used in linux returns useless, completely inaccurate data(this is documented pretty clearly in the daemon documentation but doesn't seem to be common knowledge).
I've refined my data collection scripts over the past 5 years or so, they work great now. CPU usage for my cacti systems is sourced from 'sar'. I really hate how sar has gone down hill as far as ability to parse it. RHEL 3 was great, RHEL 4 was ok, and RHEL 5 is almost useless, don't know what I'll do when RHEL 6 comes out.
nate
I just wish that someone posted 'hey, don't waste time with mrtg until you deal with snmp..and good luck with that'
School of hard knocks...I coulda went to the beach the last week...
I will check out that program
Thought I would share this..not sure exactly what it is...but I wish I could pull out my configurations with a program like this...
http://www.openeyet.nl/scc/examples/scc.centos50.html
Really cool.
Relly intense view of the whole server.
Thought I would share this..not sure exactly what it is...but I wish I could pull out my configurations with a program like this...
http://www.openeyet.nl/scc/examples/scc.centos50.html Really cool.
Relly intense view of the whole server.
Bob,
Go to
and get the software to do it
:-)
- rh
Hi all,
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
TIA.
Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Hi all,
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final) The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it. HTH,
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
TIA.
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Lunix1618 <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 11:35 AM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final)
The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it.
Fast reply, thx. 8-)
No hw-issues sounds good!
Do you mean extending the array from within CentOS or at firmware level at boot-time?
I doubt however this'd be an issue with us, since the machine comes fully loaded from start with eight disks and we're not likely to add any more, new or bigger, except in the case of a disk-failure.
Thx for the feedback.
Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Lunix1618 <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 11:35 AM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final)
The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it.
Fast reply, thx. 8-)
No hw-issues sounds good!
Do you mean extending the array from within CentOS or at firmware level at boot-time?
for both, because the RAID controller doesn't support. that is not CentOS issue.
I doubt however this'd be an issue with us, since the machine comes fully loaded from start with eight disks and we're not likely to add any more, new or bigger, except in the case of a disk-failure.
Yeah, you rite and lucky :)
Lunix1618 <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:45 PM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final)
The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it.
Fast reply, thx. 8-)
No hw-issues sounds good!
Do you mean extending the array from within CentOS or at firmware level at boot-time?
for both, because the RAID controller doesn't support. that is not CentOS issue.
Ah, ok, Thx for the clarification.
I doubt however this'd be an issue with us, since the machine comes fully loaded from start with eight disks and we're not likely to add any more, new or bigger, except in the case of a disk-failure.
Yeah, you rite and lucky :)
I'm bound to be lucky after all the bad luck I've had recently with hardware... 8-}
Has anyone got Dell OpenManage running on CentOS so one can monitor the server components via their web interface and via snmp?
Regards, Andrew.
On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Sorin@Gmail sorin.srbu@gmail.com wrote:
Lunix1618 <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 12:45 PM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear
with
you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the
raid-controller
of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final)
The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it.
Fast reply, thx. 8-)
No hw-issues sounds good!
Do you mean extending the array from within CentOS or at firmware level
at
boot-time?
for both, because the RAID controller doesn't support. that is not CentOS issue.
Ah, ok, Thx for the clarification.
I doubt however this'd be an issue with us, since the machine comes
fully
loaded from start with eight disks and we're not likely to add any more, new or bigger, except in the case of a disk-failure.
Yeah, you rite and lucky :)
I'm bound to be lucky after all the bad luck I've had recently with hardware... 8-}
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 13:54 +0200, Spook ZA wrote:
Has anyone got Dell OpenManage running on CentOS so one can monitor the server components via their web interface and via snmp?
<snip>
The expressed list preferences are that you not highjack threads. Start a new one for a new subject.
The list also asks you to snip unrelated text (not needed for context comprehension). And of course, post in plain text only.
On Tuesday 16 September 2008 12:54, Spook ZA wrote:
Has anyone got Dell OpenManage running on CentOS so one can monitor the server components via their web interface and via snmp?
Regards, Andrew.
I've had CentOS 4 and 5 running on several 2850's for a few years now - now problems at all. I've had disk failures - no problem just remove the disk and put in a new one - hardware automatically rebuilds.
I've installed the OpenManage software without any problems either - before install you *may* need to change the string in /etc/redhat-release to make it look like RedHat official as I believe the software used to check that file - just change it back after install. (not sure if this is true of the later releases of OpenManage).
Regards Nick.
On Tuesday 16 September 2008 12:54, Spook ZA wrote:
Has anyone got Dell OpenManage running on CentOS so one can monitor the server components via their web interface and via snmp?
Regards, Andrew.
I don't know if this has been mentioned anywhere else but Dell provide a yum repo for the OpenManage software here:
http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/
Regards Nick.
On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 16:35 +0700, Lunix1618 wrote:
Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Hi all,
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
I am running Dell 2950 III and no issue with hardware recognization of CentOs (5.2 Final) The one small thing is I can not extend the RAID volume because at the beginning time we only have 03 HDD now when we buy new HDD we recognize that RAID controller (PERC 6/i) doesn't support add new HDD to existing volume :( so only a choice is rebuild it.
Uhh... check the DRAC - you may be able to extend the RAID5 array from there underneath the OS. You also may be able to do it using omconfig after installing omsa. This question really belongs on the Dell Linux list though... I can say that I've expanded a RAID5 volume underneath Windows quite recently on a 2850 and a 2950 without incident...
-I
Ian Forde wrote:
there underneath the OS. You also may be able to do it using omconfig after installing omsa. This question really belongs on the Dell Linux list though... I can say that I've expanded a RAID5 volume underneath Windows quite recently on a 2850 and a 2950 without incident...
Are you sure that? I remember I found an article on Dell support site explain that PERC 6/i doesn't support that. At the beginning I only have 3 hdd, now I get more 3 hdd and after that I figured can not add new hdd to existing volume. I am not install Open Manage yet ...will try it soon
PS: sorry all for OT
Uhh... check the DRAC - you may be able to extend the RAID5 array from
btw, how do you access to DRAC ? i configured IP address for it at firmware boot but can not see the interface for it.
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 02:51 +0700, Lunix1618 wrote:
Ian Forde wrote:
there underneath the OS. You also may be able to do it using omconfig after installing omsa. This question really belongs on the Dell Linux list though... I can say that I've expanded a RAID5 volume underneath Windows quite recently on a 2850 and a 2950 without incident...
Are you sure that? I remember I found an article on Dell support site explain that PERC 6/i doesn't support that. At the beginning I only have 3 hdd, now I get more 3 hdd and after that I figured can not add new hdd to existing volume. I am not install Open Manage yet ...will try it soon
You'll definitely need to install Openmanage first. My 2950 boxes have PERC 5i controllers in them.
PS: sorry all for OT
Uhh... check the DRAC - you may be able to extend the RAID5 array from
btw, how do you access to DRAC ? i configured IP address for it at firmware boot but can not see the interface for it.
It's not part of the operating system. You get to it via web browser (https)
-I
On Tue, 2008-09-16 at 11:15 +0200, Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Hi all,
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
I don't forsee any problems. I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and omreport installs fine without any problems. I can see the RAID array and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for them). Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
-I
Ian Forde <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:35 PM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
I don't forsee any problems. I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and omreport installs fine without any problems. I can see the RAID array and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for them). Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
Hi,
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 10:26 +0200, Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Ian Forde <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:35 PM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
I don't forsee any problems. I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and omreport installs fine without any problems. I can see the RAID array and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for them). Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
I'm running RHEL5 and CentOS 5 on many PE 2850's. As long as you use the Dell PERC4 or PERC5 controllers all will work well. Onboard NICs work fine too.
Regards,
Michel
Michel van Deventer <> scribbled on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:31 AM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognise the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
I don't forsee any problems. I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and omreport installs fine without any problems. I can see the RAID array and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for them). Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
I'm running RHEL5 and CentOS 5 on many PE 2850's. As long as you use the Dell PERC4 or PERC5 controllers all will work well. Onboard NICs work fine too.
Do they vary in this particular series?
On Wed, 2008-09-17 at 10:26 +0200, Sorin@Gmail wrote:
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
Still don't forsee any problems... I was running RHL 7.2 and 9 on PowerEdge 2850 boxes 6 years ago without problems, though I didn't have OMSA on them (not even sure if it was available for RHL at that time). There shouldn't be a problem with CentOS 5.2 though. You've got a PERC 5/i, and I know that's supported in OMSA under RHEL 5.2. So I'd say just go for it... and if you want more confirmation that it's certified and supported for RHEL 5.2, you can check the http://support.dell.com page, specify a PowerEdge 2850, and choose RHEL5. The fact that it's there indicates that it's working for Dell, let people outside of Dell... RH had an entry at https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=232290 but the link is busted. But it still shows that it's certified...
-I
Ian Forde <> scribbled on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:10 AM:
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge modell is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
Still don't forsee any problems... I was running RHL 7.2 and 9 on PowerEdge 2850 boxes 6 years ago without problems, though I didn't have OMSA on them (not even sure if it was available for RHL at that time). There shouldn't be a problem with CentOS 5.2 though. You've got a PERC 5/i, and I know that's supported in OMSA under RHEL 5.2. So I'd say just go for it... and if you want more confirmation that it's certified and supported for RHEL 5.2, you can check the http://support.dell.com page, specify a PowerEdge 2850, and choose RHEL5. The fact that it's there indicates that it's working for Dell, let people outside of Dell... RH had an entry at https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=232290 but the link is busted. But it still shows that it's certified...
Fair enough, thx. Seems "rock-solid" is the word. 8-)
Thanks again.
Ian Forde <> scribbled on Wednesday, September 17, 2008 11:10 AM:
[snipping galore] You've got a PERC 5/i, and I know that's supported in OMSA under RHEL 5.2. So I'd say just go for it... and if you want more confirmation that it's certified and supported for RHEL 5.2, you can check the http://support.dell.com page, specify a PowerEdge 2850, and choose RHEL5. The fact that it's there indicates that it's working for Dell, let people outside of Dell... RH had an entry at https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=232290 but the link is busted. But it still shows that it's certified...
Busted link is up now.
FWIW, I just found out that this particular Poweredge 2850 has a PERC 4e. Can't find any info on this on the above urls. However googling on "PERC 4e" shows that some ppl seems to have gotten it to work, but that some rpms are necessary post-install or something.
on 9-17-2008 1:26 AM Sorin@Gmail spake the following:
Ian Forde <> scribbled on Tuesday, September 16, 2008 8:35 PM:
Our department's planning to buy a refurbished Dell Poweredge 2850 running dual-xeons and with a rather big raid array (8x 146GB).
*My* plan is to install CentOS on this machine and I'd like to hear with you guys if there are any gotchas' doing this.
My main concern is the ability of CentOS to recognize the raid-controller of the Dell and run a raid5-array as well as drivers for the onboard NICs.
Any feedback on this is appreciated.
I don't foresee any problems. I'm running CentOS 5.2 on a 2950 III and omreport installs fine without any problems. I can see the RAID array and monitor via the Nagios omreport plugins (search nagios-exchange for them). Onboard NICs shouldn't be a problem either...
Thx. A former unix-admin at the dept thinks it might be a little on the old side hardware-wise, this particular server is about four years old. I'm split...
This particular Poweredge model is certified for RHEL 2 and 3. If I'd try to install RHEL5 on it, would bad things happen, or is it just a support issue? Seeing how CentOS 5.2 is equivalent to RHEL5, I don't see *what* could happen though... Kernel panics??
They just stopped making that model so they won't re-certify it with newer distros. It will either work or not work, but more than likely it will work. The main gotcha with older hardware and newer distros is if they decide to not port an older piece of hardware anymore like they did with the old megaraid drivers.
You might also want to check the Dell Linux-PowerEdge mailing list:
Bob Hoffman napsal(a):
Thought I would share this..not sure exactly what it is...but I wish I could pull out my configurations with a program like this...
Yes, there is also dconf http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/dconf/ David Hrbáč
Bob Hoffman wrote:
http://www.openeyet.nl/scc/examples/scc.centos50.html
Really cool.
Relly intense view of the whole server.
Looks like the output of sosreport.
Bob Hoffman wrote:
Thought I would share this..not sure exactly what it is...but I wish I could pull out my configurations with a program like this...
http://www.openeyet.nl/scc/examples/scc.centos50.html
Really cool.
Relly intense view of the whole server.
More likely SCC.. http://www.openeyet.nl/scc/index.html
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Bob Hoffman -
David Hrbáč -
Filipe Brandenburger -
Ian Forde -
Jim Wildman -
John R Pierce -
Kenneth Porter -
Lunix1618 -
Michel van Deventer -
nate -
Nick Goddard -
RobertH -
Scott Silva -
Sorin＠Gmail -
Spook ZA -
William L. Maltby