Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

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ghane
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Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:24 am

Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by ghane »

Hi,

It is possible, via a script which connects to the monitored host, to extract numbers from the NTP process and feed them to cacti. This was required because there was no supported implementation of native SNMP in the NTP codebase, as documented in RFC 5907.

The NTPsec project (a rework with a focus on security) now has a working ntpsnmpd. I can vouch that it runs stable, and through a AgentX connection, can feed into the SNMP agent running on the monitored host.

As far as I can tell, there is no plugin to read that data.

Could I offer a bounty, for a plugin that is released under a BSD licence? The developer of ntpsnmpd is available for any quieries, and I can help out as well.

Thanks,
netniV
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Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by netniV »

If it's available via SNMP then you don't need a plugin, just a template. Can you provide any of the MIB / OID information?
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ghane
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:24 am

Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by ghane »

netniV wrote:If it's available via SNMP then you don't need a plugin, just a template. Can you provide any of the MIB / OID information?
Thank you.

The canonical cite: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5907

For the current implementation, the following stuff does not work:

Code: Select all

The ntpEntStatusEntityUptime OID specifies a bizzare time format. This
does not match what the SNMP tools expect to see from a TimeTicks variable.
Instead the daemon returns a normal TimeTicks value.

The ntpEntNotifConfigChanged trap is left unimplemented. This is because
there currently is no way to implement what it wants, and it demands alerts
regarding changes that are not part of NTP's jurisdiction.

The ntpEntTimeResolution OID currently uses data from the sys_fuzz variable
as the base for it's calculations. It is by no means certain that this is
the correct choice, and the returned data should be taken with scepticism.

The ntpEntStatPktModeTable is unimplemented due to not currently having a
data source.

If you can get a template up for *some* counters, I can help finish the rest.

Thank you
ghane
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:24 am

Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by ghane »

Please contact me off-list ( ghane0@gmail.com ) if you can help.

I can provide SNMP access to a server running the NTP SNMPd code

US$200 for a working template (thanks for the pointer, netniV). PayPal preferred, can do other stuff as well.

Template does not have to be 100% complete
Template has to be contributed under a BSD licence to the cacti project

Thanks, again
netniV
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Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by netniV »

Sent you an email for the details. I will take a look at the links in the meantime.
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netniV
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Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by netniV »

There's a lot of fields in there. Are there any in particular that you would want to graph?
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netniV
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Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by netniV »

I have now finished this and it is ready for testing.

Example of graphs taken in the last few minutes showing both Entity and Association type graphs
Image
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ghane
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2018 6:24 am

Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by ghane »

netniV wrote:I have now finished this and it is ready for testing.
Hi, is there a repository I could pull from?

--
Sanjeev
netniV
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Re: Plugin for RFC5907 (NTP)

Post by netniV »

Just sent you an email with the details. The repository is currently at:
https://github.com/netniV/cacti-templates/
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