Setting up a basic Shinken Configuration

Default Shinken configuration

If you followed the 10 Minute Shinken Installation Guide tutorial you were able to install and launch Shinken.

The default configuration deployed with the Shinken sources contains:

  • one arbiter
  • one scheduler
  • one poller
  • one reactionner
  • one broker
  • one receiver (commented out)

All these elements must have a basic configuration. The Arbiter must know about the other daemons and how to communicate with them, just as the other daemons need to know on which TCP port they must listen on.

Configure the Shinken Daemons

The schedulers, pollers, reactionners and brokers daemons need to know in which directory to work on, and on which TCP port to listen. That’s all.

Note

If you plan on using the default directories, user (shinken) and tcp port you shouldn’t have to edit these files.

Each daemon has one configuration file. The default location is /etc/shinken/.

Important

Remember that all daemons can be on different servers: the daemons configuration files need to be on the server which is running the daemon, not necessarily on every server

Let’s see what it looks like:

$cat /etc/shinken/daemons/schedulerd.ini

[daemon]
workdir=/var/lib/shinken
pidfile=%(workdir)s/schedulerd.pid
port=7768
host=0.0.0.0

daemon_enabled=1

# Optional configurations

user=shinken
group=shinken
idontcareaboutsecurity=0
use_ssl=0
#certs_dir=etc/certs
#ca_cert=etc/certs/ca.pem
#server_cert=etc/certs/server.pem
hard_ssl_name_check=0
use_local_log=1
local_log=brokerd.log
log_level=INFO
max_queue_size=100000

So here we have a scheduler:

  • workdir: Working directory of the daemon. By default /var/lib/shinken

  • pidfile: PID file of the daemon (so we can kill it :) ). By default /var/lib/shinken/schedulerd.pid for a scheduler.

  • port: TCP port to listen to. By default:

    • scheduler: 7768
    • poller: 7771
    • reactionner: 7769
    • broker: 7772
    • arbiter: 7770 (the arbiter configuration will be seen later)
  • host: IP interface to listen on. The default 0.0.0.0 means all interfaces.

  • user: User used by the daemon to run. By default shinken.

  • group: Group of the user. By default shinken.

  • idontcareaboutsecurity: If set to 1, you can run it under the root account. But seriously: do not do this. The default is 0 of course.

  • daemon_enabled : If set to 0, the daemon won’t run. For example, in distributed setups where you only need a poller.

  • use_ssl=0

  • #certs_dir=etc/certs

  • #ca_cert=etc/certs/ca.pem

  • #server_cert=etc/certs/server.pem

  • hard_ssl_name_check=0

  • use_local_log=1 : Log all messages that match the log_level for this daemon in a local directory.

  • local_log=brokerd.log : Name of the log file where to save the logs.

  • log_level=INFO : Log_level that will be permitted to be logger. Warning permits Warning, Error, Critical to be logged. INFO by default.

  • max_queue_size=100000 : If a module gets a brok queue() higher than this value, it will be killed and restarted. Set to 0 to disable it.

Daemon declaration in the global configuration

Now each daemon knows in which directory to run, and on which tcp port to listen. A daemon is a resource in the Shinken architecture. Such resources must be declared in the global configuration (where the Arbiter is) for them to be utilized.

The global configuration file is: /etc/shinken/shinken.cfg

The daemon declarations are quite simple: each daemon is represented by an object. The information contained in the daemon object are network parameters about how its resources should be treated (e.g. is it a spare, ...).

Each objects type corresponds to a daemon:
  • arbiter
  • scheduler
  • poller
  • reactionner
  • broker
  • receiver

The names were chosen to clearly represent their roles. :)

They have these parameters in common:

Special parameters

Some daemons have special parameters:

For the arbiter:
  • host_name: hostname of the server where the arbiter is installed. It’s mandatory for a high availability environment (2 arbiters or more).
For pollers:

Module objects

All daemons can use modules. In the brokers case, they are mandatory for it to actually accomplish a task.

Modules have some common properties:
  • module_name: module name called by the resource.
  • module_type: module type of the module. It’s a fixed value given by the module.
  • other options: each module can have specific parameters. See the respective module documentation to learn more about them.
Module references, list of overall modules:
  • Arbiter modules
  • Scheduler modules
  • Broker modules
  • Receiver modules
  • Pollers modules
  • Reactionner modules

Configuration example

Here is an example of a simple configuration (which you already used without knowing it during the 10min installation tutorial). It has been kept to the strict minimum, with only one daemon for each type. There is no load distribution or high availability, but you’ll get the picture more easily.

Here, we have a server named server-1 that has 192.168.0.1 as its IP address:

define arbiter{
     arbiter_name  arbiter-1
     host_name     server-1
     address       192.168.0.1
     port          7770
     spare         0
}

define scheduler{
     scheduler_name   scheduler-1
     address          192.168.0.1
     port             7768
     spare            0
}

define reactionner{
     reactionner_name     reactionner-1
     address              192.168.0.1
     port                 7769
     spare                0
}

define poller{
     poller_name     poller-1
     address         192.168.0.1
     port            7771
     spare           0
}

define broker{
     broker_name      broker-1
     address          192.168.0.1
     port             7772
     spare            0
     modules          Status-Dat,Simple-log
}

define module{
     module_name      Simple-log
     module_type      simple_log
     path             /var/lib/shinken/shinken.log
}

define module{
     module_name              Status-Dat
     module_type              status_dat
     status_file              /var/lib/shinken/status.data
     object_cache_file        /var/lib/shinken/objects.cache
     status_update_interval   15 ; update status.dat every 15s
}

See? That was easy. And don’t worry about forgetting one of them: if there is a missing daemon type, Shinken automatically adds one locally with a default address/port configuration.

Removing unused configurations

The sample shinken.cfg file has all possible modules in addition to the basic daemon declarations.

  • Backup your shinken.cfg file.
  • Delete all unused modules from your configuration file
  • Ex. If you do not use the openldap module, delete it from the file

This will make any warnings or errors that show up in your log files more pertinent. This is because the modules, if declared will get loadedup even if they are not use in your Modules declaration of your daemons.

If you ever lose your shinken.cfg, you can simply go to the shinken github repository and download the file.

Launch all daemons

To launch daemons, simply type:

daemon_path -d -c daemon_configuration.ini
The command lines arguments are:
  • -c, –config: Config file.
  • -d, –daemon: Run in daemon mode
  • -r, –replace: Replace previous running scheduler
  • -h, –help: Print detailed help screen
  • –debug: path of the debug file

So a standard launch of the resources looks like:

/usr/bin/shinken-scheduler -d -c /etc/shinken/schedulerd.ini
/usr/bin/shinken-poller -d -c /etc/shinken/pollerd.ini
/usr/bin/shinken-reactionner -d -c /etc/shinken/reactionnerd.ini
/usr/bin/shinken-broker -d -c /etc/shinken/brokerd.ini

Now we can start the arbiter with the global configuration:

#First we should check the configuration for errors
python bin/shinken-arbiter -v -c etc/shinken.cfg

#then, we can really launch it
python bin/shinken-arbiter -d -c etc/shinken.cfg

Now, you’ve got the same thing you had when you launched bin/launch_all.sh script 8-) (but now you know what you’re doing)

What’s next

You are ready to continue to the next section, get DATA IN Shinken.

If you feel in the mood for testing even more shinken features, now would be the time to look at advanced_features to play with distributed and high availability architectures!

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