mURLin - URL Monitoring with Cacti

[jamoflaw]

Guide on URL monitoring with Cacti:

Apologies can't post links atm!
http://withjames.co.uk/?page_id=274

This plugin should now be classed as stable.




Features:
Adds URL Monitoring to Cacti
Regex Text Matching on the Returned HTML Markup
Graph and Data Templates For Download Time and HTTP Return Code
Supports Multiple URL’s Per Server Through Data Queries
Proxy support - With authentication
NEW - Stacked time graphs (See above)
NEW - Availability Graphs


Any questions let me know!

RELEASE NOTES:


v0.2.2
Release notes:
Fixed bug with CactiEZ and the jQueryskin plugin which caused the cacti instance to display an error at the top of the page
Updated the database to support website URLs of greater than 256. The new maximum is 2048 characters. The UI has been updated to stop URLs of greater than this being passed to the functions.

v0.2.1
Release notes:
Fixed a regression which meant that a site which takes longer than 1 second to respond on more than one field may show incorrectly
Fixed bug with proxy support

It is recommended that you update to this version as it contains fixes to bugs and greatly improves performance.

v0.2.0
Release notes:
Caching of results for faster lookups
Stacked Graphs (Detailed download times)
Availability Graph Template
Various bugfixes

v0.1.7
Release notes:
Full proxy support inc authenticating proxies (Thanks to Vincent Geannin)
Automatic Upgrade Procedure now in place

v0.1.6
Release notes:
Fixed an issue where including sites with GET variables didn't display correctly in the previews
Added new data source - download size
Added current values to graph templates (last)

v0.1.5
Release notes:
Fixed the issue where the data query was still reporting a mapping where the last mapping was removed

v0.1.4
Release notes:
Properly fixed the scrolling problem now....
Added client side validation to the user input forms

[Linegod]

If you get a chance, please post this to the plugins site: http://docs.cacti.net/plugins.guidelines

[enyap]

Good job on your work so far! I installed it last night and found a couple of things that may help others to get this installed as well as providing feedback as its a Beta version...

I couldn't extract the mURLin-0.1.zip using tar as per the std instructions for installing plugins but got around this by using unzip mURLin-0.1.zip instead.

The plugin installed and enabled without issue. I have ~100 devices being monitored and when I tried to add a "host" in the mURLin tab, I found that I couldn't see my "device" in the list of hosts because it would neither scroll or give me an option to display the next page. Got around this by filtering the "hosts".

The next challenge was testing the URL to be loaded, for some reason the page wouldn't load (not a problem with the plugin) but the page test dialogue appeared to indicate that it was some sort of problem with proxy settings rather than a simple case that the URL was wrong. This was further confused because I had already entered the RegEX string, so that gave an error indicating that my string might be wrong, rather than the fact that the page couldn't be loaded.

After that everything was pretty simple.

If it helps I'm running Cacti 0.8.8a on Centos 6.4.

[enyap]

I noticed that the HTTP code was displaying with 2 decimal points, so I've changed the graph template to "exact" for that field, see below...

mURLin - Graph Template change.PNG (33.72 KiB) Viewed 27420 times

[jamoflaw]

Thanks for the pointers there, I have fixed both and they should import with the update to 0.1.3 which should be downloadable from Sourceforge

The URL downloading side uses curl so its not very intelligent as to redirects etc. It will literally get what it is told! I have a couple of sites which have odd redirects (thanks to IIS etc) basically followed the links exactly from the output (clicking Open url) and eventually got the bits I needed!

I have a feature list I would like to add to this, not sure if anyone else has any other ideas:

Stacked Graphs showing other statistics (DNS lookup time, download time for example)
Import/Export of Host Mappings
Proxy Authentication

Anything else I can think of later on

Was thinking of working on a WMI based service monitoring plugin with the same kind of setup, host mapping -> services in this case? Anyone be interested in that?

[jamoflaw]

If you get a chance, please post this to the plugins site: http://docs.cacti.net/plugins.guidelines

Tis added.

http://docs.cacti.net/userplugin:murlin

[enyap]

I like the idea of the stacked graphs, that should help explain why a page is slow to load.

Tested with thold this afternoon and they work well together generating emails with graphs included when a threshold is breached. It did highlight the need for a current page load time, so I added one and moved it before Max: (see below).

Off to download 0.3 now, so may have some more feedback tomorrow.

mURLin Graph template.PNG (11.41 KiB) Viewed 27407 times

[jamoflaw]

Uploaded v0.1.4

Release notes:
Properly fixed the scrolling problem now....
Added client side validation to the user input forms


I have also uploaded the package as a tar.gz rather than a zip.

[jamoflaw]

2 updates tonight....

0.1.5 released, fixed the removal of last URL mapping issue.

Apologies to enyap I keep meaning to add current to the graph template! I will in the next release

[jamoflaw]

mURLin v0.1.6 released.

New graph included (download size) and bug fixes.

[enyap]

Thanks for that, I'll give it a go over the coming days. I'm just wondering what the value of download size is, surely that would only change if the web page source changes?

The version on http://docs.cacti.net/userplugin:murlin still says 0.1.5 even if the download is actually 0.1.6 says Mr Picky

[jamoflaw]

Lol havent got round to editing that yet, my little one woke up!



Download size was a requested addition

[jamoflaw]

v0.1.7 has just been released!

Full proxy support including authenticating proxies.

[jamoflaw]

Just released v0.2.1

As mentioned in the 1st post it fixes bugs and a regression which can cause incorrect data to be returned on some slow responding sites. (Over 1 second response)

It is recommended that you update to the latest version.

[jamoflaw]

New release, v0.2.2, now supports cactiEZ's jQueryskin plugin and URL length modifications.

Any issues please post here or on the website at http://www.withjames.co.uk