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  Remstats was written by
  Thomas Erskine at the
  CRC in Canada and now
  at SourceWorks.

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To-Do List for Remstats



High Priority

134 20010829 [LOW] - make header_bar (in htmlstuff) do the link making, if available and fix whatever uses it not to.

133 20010829 [LOW] - add an option to make nt-discover update old hosts with a standard set of RRDs, even if the hosts are already known

132 20010824 [HIGH] - BUG: get rid of the spikes in uptime from the unix-status-server

131 20010824 [MED] - make status pages for each host, group and for all hosts using the new alertstatus and possibly alertvalue.

130 20010823 [HIGH] - add an <RRD::EXEC ...> tag to rrgcgi. To by used in host index pages (see 129).

128 20010629 [MED,HOLD] - custom, configuration-supplied info per rrd which is simply available wherever it makes sense, e.g. in alerts.

- first make sure someone has a use for it.

127 20010622 [MED] - graph data together with historical data. This will probably mean either populating another rrd with historical averages, temporarily or permanently, or modifying rrdtool. The former is certainly simpler to do, given my knowledge of the internals of rrdtool. However, it needs to have another rrd for each period? Need to keep the same data over some longer period, a multiple of the period of interest, as well as the averages, from period to period.

122 20010330 [HIGH] - rrd prog-* which tells if a particular named process is running, using the ps section of the unix-status-collector.

121 20010202 [MED,HOLD] - how about an discovery program, to find and identify hosts and then run the appropriate new-xxx-hosts scripts to add them?

DONE 20010608 - nt-discover to find and add NT boxen

115) 20001229 [HIGH] - need docs on errors. Specifically, when run-remstats kills a collector for taking too long. And where to find the output of the killed collector.

112) 20001212 [LOW,HOLD] - web-based remstats configurator. Needs to consider security, at least from the point of view that you don't want to lose your configuration. The most important part is hosts. A lot of the rest doesn't have to be changed, or only once.

111) 20001212 [LOW,HOLD] consider grafting on (at least links to) some kind of system configuration interface. For configuring the mmonitored entities, not remstats.

110) 20001212 [LOW,HOLD] consider problem-fixing interface. It'd be nice to try to fix things if there is a known way to do so. A simple kludge would be to add another method to the alert-destination-map which deals with problems that it knows about, possibly invoking plugins for specific alerts.

109) 20001212 [MED] nt-log-collector, with modules for event-logs and ntmail logs.

70) 20000407 [HIGH] CGI scripts need to have a way to deal with alternate config-files, and graph-writer needs to tell them if they can't work it out themselves. Otherwise, people need to be told to do multiple installs of the CGI scripts, which might be the best way.

	make install-cgis CONFIGDIR=config-xxx

Not that painfull, but wastefull and makes upgrade messier.

- I don't like the multiple-install method, but any other method needs a way of getting configuration information into the CGI scripts. Any method which passes info in via the URL or form fields is out: too unsafe. The only other method I can think of is to read a configuration file in the same directory as the CGI script. This ought to be safe from modification, or your web-site is waiting to be mutilated. The other part to consider is whether any part of the info in the CGI config-file is sensitive. I.E. do we have to protect it in some way.

- Configuration file in the same directory won't work either, you'd still have to install the cgi's multiple times. I'm starting to think that multiple installations may be the only safe thing to do.

99) 20000619 [HIGH] make unix-status-collector send the directories that we want df for and make unix-status-server do "df /dir1 /dir2" to get them, and pull them off one line at at time. This is to deal with things like disconnected NFS-mounted directories hanging df when we do just a bare "df".

86) 20000419 [HIGH] trends analysis

87) 20000419 [HIGH] alerts based on trends analysis and historical data, like one-week average and standard-deviation, ... (for Steve)

106) 20000922 [MEDIUM] make a file-collector. Similar to the log-collector, only for small, local files. Slurp the file into memory, match patterns and pull out values. The data line in an rrd definition would be like:

	source file
	data VARNAME	GAUGE:600:0:U FUNCTION PATTERN(WITH)PARENS

in fact, this would share so much code with the log-collector that it might be worth combining the two. This allows collection from things like Linux's /proc.

98) 20000619 [MEDIUM] add group index files and store hosts under group directories. For easier application of access-controls. (for Florian)

2) ???????? [MEDIUM-INPROGRESS] make rrd munger, like copyrrd was supposed to be use dump/restore and process the xml form (rrddump-munger) what functions do we need? Make one script for each function.

  • add a DS (less important, as we can just make a new rrd)
  • remove a DS (less important, as we can ignore it)
  • add an archive
  • extend an archive
  • change CF of an archive
  • remove an archive
  • filter data within an archive
    • change NaN to number/max/min
    • change ># to NaN/max/min
    • change <# to NaN/max/min

Lower Priority

102) 20000912 [LOW] add see-also to host config, which will materialize links in the host header. Config line like:

	seealso	host:xyzzy http://www.somewhere ftp://ftphost

the special "host:" pseudo-URL gets changed to a link to the remstats page for that host.

103) 20000915 [MEDIUM] make-path doesn't work with non fqdn hosts Make it read the configuration, so it can look up the IP number in the host config and use that if it's defined. Otherwise, default to gethostbyaddr.

107) 20000922 [MEDIUM] extra status header lines for hosts, from specified STATUS files creaded by the various collectors. Add lines to host definition like:

	extrastatus "STATUS DESCRIPTION" STATUS-FILE-NAME

60) 20000328 [MEDIUM] replace route-collector with something which scales. SNMPwalking bgp4PathAttrBest doesn't scale to large Internet routers with 400 peers, taking over an hour to complete. (see also 61)

- look at a script to follow the output of zebra. That's a lot of overhead though. Easy if zebra is solid.

- How difficult can it be to make a native BGP listener? I'm not clear on the protocol, but it doesn't look too bad.

45) 20000121 [MEDIUM] make snmp-collector send only one packet per host

- test and make sure that we do get back whatever succeeded. I vaguely remember that it didn't work. [Later: at least under UCD snmp under linux, if an item isn't implemented in the MIB, you get back NOTHING. Specifically, look for the non-unicast packet counters as well as something else; you get nothing back. This isn't good.]

- have to re-write snmp-collector completely, which isn't that bad an idea. This means a two-pass structure. On pass one, we construct the complete query and then send it. On pass two, we examine all the results and format them.

9) ???????? [MEDIUM-TESTING] make alerts take connectivity dependence into account

- add "via" line to host section to deal with hubs and switches [DONE]

- I think it's done. See what happens next outage.

42) 20000114 [MEDIUM] snmp-collector mod to allow summary data collected from a walk and then filtered as a single data-point. E.G. specify a rrd "oid" like:

	walk    count ifOperStatus = 1

would produce a count of the number of interfaces on that device that were active (i.e. had a live device plugged into them). Or a similar one would let you count BGP routes, or arp addresses, ...

- Unfortunately, from experience with the snmp-route-collector, this is going to be slow for anything with a large number of items.

43) 20000114 [MEDIUM] parallelizing the collectors, at least on a group basis, preferably host or group.

- collectors must accept -G and -H flags to request processing of the specified group or host, respectively. Run-remstats needs to fork extra processes according to a config-file line, "parallel group" or "parallel host".

- 20010831 TEE - implemented -H flags for all collectors except for the remoteping-collector, which I'm not using anyway right now.

51) 20000216 [LOW] need a way to specify URL for port-http. The root page doesn't always exist.

37) 19991216 [LOW] traceroute sometimes shows incorrect routing, which confuses the topology-monitor, causing false positives

50) 20000215 [LOW] make inventory script. Runs uname (for hardware and software), ifconfig -a, netstat -nr, hostname and any others I can think of to collect configuration info. Then figures out the versions of important software, e.g. run perl -v, gcc -v ... Make a subdir to put it in and make a tool definition to get it onto the host pages.

- looks like the beginning of a discovery script.

62) 20000329 [LOW] make different markers for different levels of alert on quick-index.

69) 20000406 [LOW] is there any use for write_environment in check-config?

97) 20000616 [LOW] make port-collector or check-config complain about having a script with ok/warn/error/critical patterns but no send string. The port-collector will ignore patterns unless there is a send string.


On Hold

Usually waiting for next major release, or trapped by something else. (in priority order)

40) 20000104 [MEDIUM-HOLD] consider some form of access-control for servers

- hash-based "password"

- ssl tunneling ought to work for everything except SNMP

- what does this buy? With the various servers run under tcp_wrappers an attacker must either gain access to the remstats collector machine or spoof a tcp session from them. If you've been "owned" you've got bigger problems. If the attacker spoofs a session with a remstats server, tcp-wrappers will insist that it must come from one of the allowed hosts, so that's where the stolen output will go. This is only usefull to the attacker if they have access to the remstats collector machine or if they can sniff the traffic between the collector and the server. The only data loss possible is with the log-server which keeps state. (Ignoring DOS attacks which are always a problem.)

- unless someone needs this, it's on hold

6) ???????? [LOW-NEEDS:2-HOLD] increase CA3 resolution

- need rrd munger (2)

10) ???????? [LOW-INPROGRESS-HOLD] make graph of connectivity

13) ???????? [LOW-INPROGRESS-HOLD] snmp trap listener to update status files

- needs filter to be usefull [DONE]

- I haven't seen any useful traps so this is on hold.

14) ???????? [LOW-NEEDS:2-HOLD] make rrd structural changes in config file get applied to the rrds.

- some taken care of with snmpif-setspeed, but need a more general solution

- look at new XML output of rrddump

39) ???????? [LOW-HOLD] make RRD dumper, to put data out in a form that can be loaded into a database

- I don't need it, per se, but it might be easier than writing the availability report generator.

52) 20000215 [LOW] make a makegraph.cgi, or whatever, that will let you make a somewhat custom graph on the fly. makegraph.cgi by itself will list all the hosts and let you choose one. makegraph.cgi?host=xxx will list all the RRDs for this host and let you choose ?one?. makegraph.cgi?host=xxx&rrd=yyy will list the various DSs for this RRD and let you choose the ones you want. Then you get to define any CDEFs needed and then LINEn/AREA/STACK for each DEF or CDEF desired. And size, title, legends...

- On hold since graph.cgi will let you get at any existing graph you want. If I find a use or need for this, I'll re-activate it.

92) 20000518 [HIGH] collect traffic info from cflowd (artsportms). Make it flexible enough that it can let you choose which ports you want (one per rrd?). Make a loader to load historical data.

- [DONE 20000524] artsportms-loader done

- I no longer have access to devices with this feature


I've also kept the stuff that used to be here, but has already been done.


Last updated Thu Mar 17 17:00:21 UTC 2005 by <thomas.erskine@sourceworks.com>.
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