smokeping1

Usage

Overview

The smokeping tool is the commandline part of the SmokePing system. Its main function is to run as a daemon and send Pings to all the Targets you have specified in the Config file. When you call smokeping without arguments it will start as a daemon and do its work.

If called with an argument, then further functions can be activated, as seen in the Synopsis above. The --email function is explained in the documentation on the config file.

The --filter option allows you to run the daemon on a big config file, but have the config file filtered and only measure the entries that pass the filter. This is useful for remote measurement. Run Smokeping with two exclusive filters in two locations and rsync the rrds back to the webserver host where you run the cgi. Filters act on the section names in the config file. Multiple section names are concatenated with / like path names:

 *** targets ***
 + A
 ....
 + B
 ...
 ++ C

This gives

 /A

and

 /B, /B/C

If I want to monitor /A my filter would look like this:

 --filter=/A

Filters follow regular expression syntax. The are always anchored at the tip of the string. by adding a ! to the front of the filter string you negate it. Matching entries will be excluded from monitoring. Multiple --filter arguments can be used to assemble complex filters:

  --filter=/A --filter=/B

would include all the targets

  --filter=/A --filter=/B --filter=!/B/C

would include all but /B/C.

The --makepod does get used internally to produce the documentation on the SmokePing configuration file.

Please refer to the installation document for detailed setup instructions.

Setup

When installing SmokePing, this file has to be adjusted to fit your local system. Three paths have to be entered.

One pointing to your rrdtool installation

 use lib qw(/usr/pack/rrdtool-1.0.33-to/lib/perl);

One pointing to the place where you have installed the SmokePing libraries

 use lib qw(/home/oetiker/public_html/smokeping/lib);

The third path is the argument to the Smokeping::main command. It points to the SmokePing configuration file.

 use Smokeping;
 Smokeping::main("/home/oetiker/.smokeping/config");