[Kolab-devel] munin

[Mike Gabriel]

hi there,

Quoting Bernhard Reiter <bernhard at intevation.de>:

> Richard,
>
> On Wednesday 26 March 2008 08:26, Gunnar Wrobel wrote:
>> > Example munin output: http://munin.ping.uio.no/
>> >
>> > Just to let you know, that this application exists and seems usefull to
>> > kolab admins.
>>
>> munin is definitely a very useful tool and I think using it with the
>> Kolab server makes a lot of sense.
>
> I've only briefly checked the webpage and munin looks overwhelming.
>
>> Adding it to the set of features provided by the core Kolab server is
>> a different thing though. We'll get the same problem as with grey
>> listing: The Kolab server already has a rather large set of features
>> that is hard to support in its entirety. Each extra application would
>> add a good deal of additional features that would also need testing
>> and support. Given the current man power behind the project we should
>> definitely be careful about that.
>
> I agree with this notion.
> Also my strategy would be to keep the tools orthogonal to what Kolab Server
> comes with or find a very good one. I do not know enough knowledge
> to compare munin to all the other solutions to similiar problems I have seen.
>
>> That being said I believe we need a good extension/plugin possibility
>> that allows to provide such additional features/applications.
>
> I would maintain that Kolab Server is already pretty "pluggable" due to its
> Unix philosophy. Of course I am still looking forward to your proposal. :)
>
> Bernhard
>

i have been using munin at an institute i worked for for quite a  
while. to monitor a mailsystem it has quite an overhead of  
functionality...

the question is: what information do kolab administrators really  
need??? i personally would rather prefer a slightly thinner solution  
than munin (or do postmasters really need their system's entropy to  
make a brighter day???).

a less scribbly tool (compared to munin) is "spong". on its initial  
page it basically shows you green, yellow or red lights that tell you  
if your servers' services are running or not, if there is enough disk  
space available, etc. unfortunately, spong has not been maintained  
very actively, recently... spong is written in perl and it's easy to  
add features... (if one knows how to speak perl).

to watch over postfix, there is also a fine solution called  
"mailgraph" (it's a debian package). mailgraph adds perfectly missing  
information to spong (received mails, bounces, spam, etc.)

to watch over IMAP/POP3, there is another fine add-on solution.  
unfortunately, it is only available only for "courier" users, its name  
is "couriergraph". maybe this tool is easily adaptable to cyrus (both  
simply analyze the log files in /var/log/mail.*, i think).

however, providing tools like these hardcoded into kolab would imply  
providing a webserver with kolab, as well (horde also does imply  
this...).

the more packages you stuff into kolab's openpkg the more conflicts  
arise with already installed services on an already running systems.  
if you want to run other stuff on a kolab server that comes with the  
system's distribution, a package's dependencies might request the  
installation of a webserver (from the dist) and this will conflict  
with a multiply used port 80/443. loads of other conflice scenarios  
are imaginable here...

(becoming more and more off-thread here...) why not rather and this  
spend more effort on regularly providing packages that neatly  
integrate into the various package systems available in the unix  
world. it also would be helpful to store package information for  
various package systems within your CVS repository (e.g. the "debian"  
dir that contains all information to build the corresponding kolab  
packages from source). thus, checking out kolab source would allow an  
immediate package build from kolab source...

my 10¢,
mike


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