SYNOPSIS

bb [options] RECIPIENT message

DESCRIPTION

bb(1) is the client program used to communicate with a Xymon server. It is frequently used by Xymon client systems to send in status messages and pager alerts on local tests.

In Xymon, the bb program is also used for administrative purposes, e.g. to rename or delete hosts, or to disable hosts that are down for longer periods of time.

OPTIONS AND PARAMETERS

--debug

Enable debugging. This prints out details about how the connection to the BBDISPLAY server is being established.

--proxy=http://PROXYSERVER:PROXYPORT/

When sending the status messages via HTTP, use this server as an HTTP proxy instead of connecting directly to the BBDISPLAY server.

--timeout=N

Specifies the timeout for connecting to the Xymon server, in seconds. The default is 5 seconds.

RECIPIENT

The RECIPIENT parameter defines which server receives the message. If RECIPIENT is given as "0.0.0.0", then the message is sent to all of the servers listed in the BBDISPLAYS or BBPAGERS environment variable (for "status" and "page" messages, respectively).

Usually, a client will use "$BBDISP" for the RECIPIENT parameter, as this is defined for the client scripts to automatically contain the correct value.

The RECIPIENT parameter may be a URL for a webserver that has the bbmessage.cgi or similar script installed. This tunnels the Xymon messages to the BBDISPLAY server using standard HTTP protocol. The bbmessage.cgi(8) CGI tool (included in Xymon) must be installed on the webserver for the HTTP transport to work.

MESSAGE

The message parameter is the message to be sent across to the Xymon server. Messages must be enclosed in quotes, but by doing so they can span multiple lines. The maximum size of a message is defined by the maximum allowed length of your shell's commandline, and is typically 8-32 KB.

If you need to send longer status messages, you can specify "@" as the message: bb will then read the status message from its stdin.

XYMON MESSAGE SYNTAX

This section lists the most commonly used messages in the Xymon protocol.

Each message must begin with one of the Xymon commands. Where a HOSTNAME is specified, it must have any dots in the hostname changed to commas if the Xymon FQDN setting is enabled (which is the default). So e.g. the host "www.foo.com" would report as "www,foo,com".

status[+LIFETIME][/group:GROUP] HOSTNAME.TESTNAME COLOR <additional text>

This sends in a status message for a single test (column) on a single host. TESTNAME is the name of the column where this test will show up; any name is valid except that using dots in the testname will not work. COLOR must be one of the valid colors: "green", "yellow", "red" or "clear". The colors "blue" and "purple" - although valid colors - should not be sent in a status-message, as these are handled specially by the Xymon server.
The "additional text" normally includes a local timestamp and a summary of the test result on the first line. Any lines following the first one are free-form, and can include any information that may be useful to diagnose the problem being reported.
The LIFETIME defines how long this status is valid after being received by the Xymon server. The default is 30 minutes, but you can set any period you like. E.g. for a custom test that runs once an hour, you will want to set this to at least 60 minutes - otherwise the status will go purple after 30 minutes. It is a good idea to set the LIFETIME to sligtly more than the interval between your tests, to allow for variations in the time it takes your test to complete. The LIFETIME is in minutes, unless you add an "h" (hours), "d" (days) or "w" (weeks) immediately after the number, e.g. "status+5h" for a status that is valid for 5 hours.
The GROUP option is used to direct alerts from the status to a specific group. It is currently used for status generated from the Xymon clients' data, e.g. to direct alerts for a "procs" status to different people, depending on exactly which process is down.

notify HOSTNAME.TESTNAME <message text>

This triggers an informational message to be sent to those who receive alerts for this HOSTNAME+TESTNAME combination, according to the rules defined in hobbit-alerts.cfg(5) This is used by the hobbit-enadis.cgi(1) tool to notify people about hosts being disabled or enabled, but can also serve as a general way of notifying server administrators.

data HOSTNAME.DATANAME<newline><additional text>

The "data" message allows tools to send data about a host, without it appearing as a column on the Xymon webpages. This is used e.g. to report statistics about a host, e.g. vmstat data which does not in itself represent something that has a red, yellow or green identity. It is used by RRD bottom-feeder modules, among others. In Xymon, data messages are by default processed only by the hobbitd_rrd(8) module. If you want to handle data-messages by an external application, you may want to enable the hobbitd_filestore(8) module for data-messages, to store data-messages in a format compatible with how the Big Brother daemon does.

disable HOSTNAME.TESTNAME DURATION <additional text>

Disables a specific test for DURATION minutes. This will cause the status of this test to be listed as "blue" on the BBDISPLAY server, and no alerts for this host/test will be generated. If DURATION is given as a number followed by s/m/h/d, it is interpreted as being in seconds/minutes/hours/days respectively. To disable all tests for a host, use an asterisk "*" for TESTNAME.

enable HOSTNAME.TESTNAME

Re-enables a test that had been disabled.

query HOSTNAME.TESTNAME

Query the BBDISPLAY server for the latest status reported for this particular test. If the host/test status is known, the response is the first line of the status report - the current color will be the first word on the line. Additional lines of text that might be present on the status-message cannot be retrieved.
This allows any Xymon client to determine the status of a particular test, whether it is one pertaining to the host where the client is running, some other host, or perhaps the result of a combined test from multiple hosts managed by bbcombotest(1) This will typically be useful to Xymon client extension scripts, that need to determine the status of other hosts e.g. to decide if an automatic recovery action should be initiated.

config FILENAME

Retrieve one of the Xymon configuration files from the server. This command allows a client to pull files from the $BBHOME/etc/ directory on the server, allowing for semi-automatic updates of the client configuration. Since the configuration files are designed to have a common file for the configuration of all hosts in the system - and this is in fact the recommended way of configuring your clients - this makes it easier to keep the configuration files synchronized.

drop HOSTNAME

Removes all data stored about the host HOSTNAME. It is assumed that you have already deleted the host from the bb-hosts configuration file.

drop HOSTNAME TESTNAME

Remove data about a single test (column).

rename OLDHOSTNAME NEWHOSTNAME

Rename all data for a host that changes its name. You should do this before changing the hostname in the bb-hosts configuration file.

rename HOSTNAME OLDTESTNAME NEWTESTNAME

Rename data about a single test (column).

hobbitdlog HOSTNAME.TESTNAME

Retrieve the Xymon status-log for a single test. The first line of the response contain a series of fields separated by a pipe-sign:

hostname The name of the host

testname The name of the test

color Status color (green, yellow, red, blue, clear, purple)

testflags For network tests, the flags indicating details about the test (used by bbgen).

lastchange Unix timestamp when the status color last changed.

logtime Unix timestamp when the log message was received.

validtime Unix timestamp when the log message is no longer valid (it goes purple at this time).

acktime -1, or Unix timestamp when an active acknowledgement expires.

disabletime -1, or Unix timestamp when the status is no longer disabled.

sender IP-address where the status was received from.

cookie -1, or the cookie value used to acknowledge an alert.

ackmsg Empty, or the acknowledgment message sent when the status was acknowledged. Newline, pipe-signs and backslashes are escaped by with a backslash in C-style.

dismsg Empty, or the message sent when the status was disabled. Newline, pipe-signs and backslashes are escaped by with a backslash in C-style.

After the first line comes the full status log in plain text format.

hobbitdxlog HOSTNAME.TESTNAME

Retrieves an XML-string with the status log as for the "hobbitdlog" command.

hobbitdboard [CRITERIA] [fields=FIELDLIST]

Retrieves a summary of the status of all known tests available to the Xymon daemon.

By default - if no CRITERIA is provided - it returns one line for all status messages that are found in Xymon. You can filter the response by selecting a page, a host, a test or a color - wildcards are not supported, so you can pick only one page, host, test or color.

page=PAGEPATH Include only tests from hosts found on the PAGEPATH page in the bb-hosts file.

host=HOSTNAME Include only tests from the host HOSTNAME

test=TESTNAME Include only tests with the testname TESTNAME

color=COLORNAME Include only tests where the status color is COLORNAME

You can filter on e.g. both a hostname and a testname.

The response is one line for each status that matches the CRITERIA, or all statuses if no criteria is specified. The line is composed of a number of fields, separated by a pipe-sign. You can select what fields to retrieve by listing them in the FIELDLIST. The following fields are available:

hostname The name of the host

testname The name of the test

color Status color (green, yellow, red, blue, clear, purple)

flags For network tests, the flags indicating details about the test (used by bbgen).

lastchange Unix timestamp when the status color last changed.

logtime Unix timestamp when the log message was received.

validtime Unix timestamp when the log message is no longer valid (it goes purple at this time).

acktime -1, or Unix timestamp when an active acknowledgement expires.

disabletime -1, or Unix timestamp when the status is no longer disabled.

sender IP-address where the status was received from.

cookie -1, or the cookie value used to acknowledge an alert.

line1 First line of status log.

ackmsg Empty (if no acknowledge is active), or the text of the acknowledge message.

dismsg Empty (if the status is currently enabled), or the text of the disable message.

msg The full text of the current status message.

The ackmsg, dismsg and msg fields have certain characters encoded: Newline is "\n", TAB is "\t", carriage return is "\r", a pipe-sign is "\p", and a backslash is "\\".

If the "fields" parameter is omitted, a default set of hostname,testname,color,flags,lastchange,logtime,validtime,acktime,disabletime,sender,cookie,line1 is used.

hobbitdxboard

Retrieves an XML-string with the summary of all status logs as for the "hobbitdboard" command.

download FILENAME

Download a file from the Xymon servers' download directory.

client HOSTNAME.OSTYPE [HOSTCLASS]

Used to send a "client" message to the Xymon server. Client messages are generated by the Xymon client; when sent to the Xymon server they are matched against the rules in the hobbit-clients.cfg(5) configuration file, and status messages are generated for the client-side tests.

clientlog HOSTNAME [section=SECTIONNAME[,SECTIONNAME...]]

Retrieves the current raw client message last sent by HOSTNAME. The optional "section" filter is used to select specific sections of the client data.

ping

Attempts to contact the Xymon server. If successful, the Xymon server version ID is reported.

pullclient

This message is used when fetching client data via the "pull" mechanism implemented by hobbitfetch(8) and msgcache(8) for clients that cannot connect directly to the Xymon server.

ghostlist

Report a list of ghost clients seen by the Xymon server. Ghosts are systems that report data to the Xymon server, but are not listed in the bb-hosts file.

schedule [TIMESTAMP COMMAND]

Schedules an command sent to the Xymon server for execution at a later time. E.g. used to schedule disabling of a host or service at sometime in the future. COMMAND is a complete Xymon command such as the ones listed above. TIMESTAMP is the Unix epoch time when the command will be executed.
If no parameters are given, the currently scheduled tasks are listed in the response. The response is one line per scheduled command, with the job-id, the time when the command will be executed, the IP address from which this was sent, and the full command string.
To cancel an previously scheduled command, "schedule cancel JOBID" can be used. JOBID is a number provided as the first item in the output from the schedule list.

EXAMPLE

Send a normal status message to the BBDISPLAY server, using the standard Xymon protocol on TCP port 1984:

   $ $BB $BBDISP "status www,foo,com.http green `date` Web OK"

Send the same status message, but using HTTP protocol via the webservers' bbmessage.cgi script:

   $ $BB http://bb.foo.com/cgi-bin/bbmessage.cgi "status www,foo,com.http green `date` Web OK"

Use "query" message to determine the color of the "www" test, and restart Apache if it is red:

   $ WWW=`$BB $BBDISP "query www,foo,com.www" | awk '{print $1}'`
   $ if [ "$WWW" = "red" ]; then /etc/init.d/apache restart; fi

Use "config" message to update the local bb-dftab file (but only if we get a response):

   $ $BB $BBDISP "config bb-dftab" >/tmp/bb-dftab.new
   $ if [ -s /tmp/bb-dftab.new ]; then 
       mv /tmp/bb-dftab.new $BBHOME/etc/bb-dftab
     fi

Send a very large status message that has been built in the file "statusmsg.txt". Instead of providing it on the command line, pass it via stdin to the bb command:

   $ cat statusmsg.txt | $BB $BBDISP "@"

NOTES

This man-page describes the bb client program provided as part of Xymon . This implementation provides features not present in the standard Big Brother bb client - specifically, the support for sending messages over HTTP, and many commands such as "query" and "config" are not part of the bb client shipped with Big Brother.