[CentOS] network monitoring systems

Sat Apr 1 09:03:12 UTC 2006
Alexandru E. Ungur <alexandru at globalterrasoft.ro>

>>> sender: "Kai Schaetzl" date: "Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 04:33:10PM +0200" <<<EOQ
> Alexandru E. Ungur wrote on Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:11:49 +0300:
> 
> > I use Argus for monitoring and alerting: http://argus.tcp4me.com 
> > ...Initially I was almost going to write a full essay about how 
> > much and why I like it :)
> 
> I'm using bigsister at the moment. Argus looks similar and not similar. I 
> may want to try it out. How does it remote monitoring? Only by SNMP or is 
> there an agent application available (short glimpse over the documentation 
> doesn't reveal one)? I'm not familiar with SNMP at all, so it's not an 
> option for me.
You can use SNMP with Argus, but you can do just fine without it (I
don't use SNMP either btw). The remote monitoring is done by connecting
to the remote application's TCP or UDP port. It does not come with an
agent application (except some alfa try which I never used anyway).

It has 4 types of tests, quote from: http://argus.tcp4me.com/services.html
--- quote ---
    * Ping - Pings a host
    * Prog - runs a program
    * TCP - tests a TCP port
    * UDP - tests a UDP port 

Both TCP and UDP have a number of application tests built-in. Specifying
an application does the same thing as setting the various bits of data
to values appropriate for the protocol. But you could just as easily
specify them directly.

The currently built-in application tests are:

    * TCP/SMTP TCP/FTP TCP/NNTP TCP/HTTP TCP/HTTPS TCP/Gopher TCP/Telnet
      TCP/SSH TCP/POP TCP/IMAP TCP/NFS TCP/NFSv3 TCP/POPS TCP/IMAPS
      TCP/SMTPS TCP/NNTPS TCP/SIP[6]
    * UDP/SNMP UDP/SNMPv3 UDP/DNS UDP/DNSQ[1] UDP/NTP UDP/Portmap
      UDP/NFS UDP/NFSv3[2] UDP/RADIUS[3] UDP/SIP[6] UDP/IAX2[6]
    * several "special" tests: TCP/URL UDP/Domain TCP/RPC[6] UDP/RPC
--- endquote ---

With a little swiss army knife :) aka netcat + the 'Prog' test 
there's no limit to what you can monitor. I monitor besides usual 
TCP ports, some file sizes, partitions' free space and some other stuff.

For more questions on this you can try the 
http://www.tcp4me.com/mailman/listinfo/arguslist mailling list as that
would probably be more appropriate.


Hope it helps,
Alex