Post-installation tasks

Configuring your webserver (Big Sister server only)

This only needs to be done on your Big Sister server. Currently the Big Sister start script /etc/init.d/bigsister does not check the availability and configuration of a webserver on the same system which is used to display any processed data.

In order to save you some time, each installation procedure leaves you with a httpd.conf snippet in the /etc/bigsister directory which is taylored with the paths and options you might have specified during the installation process. However, the Big Sister installation routine will not touch your web server configuration in any way. It relies on you to include this snippet into your standard httpd.conf by appending the line

Include /etc/bigsister/httpd.conf

This will

  • make the documents in the .../www directory available by the specified url

  • execute the CGI scripts on demand

Installing Perl modules

[Note]Note

If you are using the binary Windows package you already have all the necessary Perl modules implicitly.

If you can bare working with ActiveState Perl (a Windows Perlinterpreter), it comes with its own easy way of installing modules (see http://www.activestate.com/).

For Linux systems many modules are available via RPM packages from your distributor. If you haven't got your Linux distribution handy or if a certain perl module seems to be missing, you can always get them from CPAN and follow their installation directives. You will find a list of CPAN mirrors on http://www.cpan.org/.

You might have to install additional perl modules to enable some Big Sister health checks or certain display functionality. For more information about specific health checks and their inter-dependancies please see under the appropriate section in chapter **. For general use, the following modules are highly recommended:

  • SNMP - All the SNMP functionality in the agent and the server bases on Simon Leinen's SNMP module available from http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/snmp/perl/). The module is included in all Big Sister versions >0.99, so there is no need to install it manually any more.

  • GD - Big Sister can present system status overviews as a graphical image map. This functionality bases on the GD module available from CPAN (install it on the server system).

  • Net::SMTP - Alarming is usually done via E-Mail and the sendmail program. If you prefer your Big Sister server to directly transmit alarm mails via SMTP - e.g. because you are running Big Sister on a non-Unix system - you will have to install the Net::SMTP module available from CPAN on your server system.

  • LWP::UserAgent and URI - are required for the realhttp test monitoring Web servers

  • Crypt::SSLeay - is required for monitoring SSL-enabled Web servers

All of the above modules - except for the GD module - are easy to install. Just follow the instructions in the respective module. Please check carefully if the required module is already installed on your system before you touch your (running) perl installation. The command perldoc perlmodlib gives you a somewhat verbose list of all perl modules installed on your system. The command perldoc [moule name] can be used to check for single modules and get even more verbose documentation (in case the requested module is installed).

[Note]Note

On most systems these commands cannot be used by the root user.

Installing RRDTool

Big Sister is able to collect performance data, store it in a database and provide you with nice trend graphics. Currently only one database exactly designed for such purposes is supported: Tobi Oetiker's RRDTool. For this feature to work you will have to download and install RRDTool. At the time this manual was written it was not necessary to install the RRDTool perl modules - having the rrdtool command installed in your path was enough. Anyway it is a good idea to install these modules. In the near future they might improve the performance of your server.

RRDTool is available from http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/