SYNOPSIS

bbtest-net -?
bbtest-net --help
bbtest-net --version
bbtest-net [options]
(See the OPTIONS section for a description of the available commandline options).

DESCRIPTION

bbtest-net(1) handles the network tests of hosts defined in the Xymon configuration file, bb-hosts. It is normally run at regular intervals by hobbitlaunch(8) via an entry in the hobbitlaunch.cfg(5) file.

bbtest-net does all of the normal tests of TCP-based network services (telnet, ftp, ssh, smtp, pop, imap ....) - i.e. all of the services listed as BBNETSVCS in bbdef.sh. For these tests, a completely new and very speedy service- checker has been implemented.

bbtest-net has built-in support for testing SSL-enabled protocols, e.g. imaps, pop3s, nntps, telnets, if SSL-support was enabled when configuring bbgen. The full list of known tests is found in the bb-services(5) file in $BBHOME/etc/bb-services.

In addition, it implements the "dns" and "dig" tests for testing DNS servers. This is done in the same way as bb-network.sh does it.

bbtest-net also implements a check for NTP servers - this test is called "ntp". If you want to use it, you must define the NTPDATE environment variable to point at the location of your ntpdate(1) program.

Note: bbtest-net performs the connectivity test (ping) based on the hostname, unless the host is tagged with "testip" or the "--dns=ip" option is used. So the target of the connectivity test can be determined by your /etc/hosts file or DNS.

GENERAL OPTIONS

--timeout=N

Determines the timeout (in seconds) for each service that is tested. For TCP tests (those from BBNETSVCS), if the connection to the service does not succeed within N seconds, the service is reported as being down. For HTTP tests, this is the absolute limit for the entire request to the webserver (the time needed to connect to the server, plus the time it takes the server to respond to the request). Default: 10 seconds

--conntimeout=N

This option is deprecated, and will be ignored. Use the --timeout option instead.

--cmdtimeout=N

This option sets a timeout for the external commands used for testing of NTP and RPC services, and to perform traceroute.

--concurrency=N

Determines the number of network tests that run in parallel. Default is operating system dependent, but will usually be 256. If bbtest-net begins to complain about not being able to get a "socket", try running bbtest-net with a lower value like 50 or 100.

--dns-timeout=N (default: 30 seconds)

bbtest-net will timeout all DNS lookups after N seconds. Any pending DNS lookups are regarded as failed, i.e. the network tests that depend on this DNS lookup will report an error.
Note: If you use the --no-ares option, timeout of DNS lookups cannot be controlled by bbtest-net.

--dns-max-all=N

Same as "--dns-timeout=N". The "--dns-max-all" option is deprecated and should not be used.

--dns=[ip|only|standard]

Determines how bbtest-net finds the IP adresses of the hosts to test. By default (the "standard"), bbtest-net does a DNS lookup of the hostname to determine the IP address, unless the host has the "testip" tag, or the DNS lookup fails.
With "--dns=only" bbtest-net will ONLY do the DNS lookup; it it fails, then all services on that host will be reported as being down.
With "--dns=ip" bbtest-net will never do a DNS lookup; it will use the IP adresse specified in bb-hosts for the tests. Thus, this setting is equivalent to having the "testip" tag on all hosts. Note that http tests will ignore this setting and still perform a DNS lookup for the hostname given in the URL; see the "bbtest-net tags for HTTP tests" section in bb-hosts(5)

--no-ares

Disable the ARES resolver built into bbtest-net. This makes bbtest-net resolve hostnames using your system resolver function. You should only use this as a last resort if bbtest-net cannot resolve the hostnames you use in the normal way (via DNS or /etc/hosts). One reason for using this would be if you need to resolve hostnames via NIS/NIS+ (a.k.a. Yellow Pages).
The system resolver function does not provide a mechanism for controlling timeouts of the hostname lookups, so if your DNS or NIS server is down, bbtest-net can take a very long time to run. The --dns-timeout option is effectively disabled when using this option.

--dnslog=FILENAME

Log failed hostname lookups to the file FILENAME. FILENAME should be a full pathname.

--report[=COLUMNNAME]

With this option, bbtest-net will send a status message with details of how many hosts were processed, how many tests were generated, any errors that occurred during the run, and some timing statistics. The default columnname is "bbtest".

--test-untagged

When using the BBLOCATION environment variable to test only hosts on a particular network segment, bbtest-net will ignore hosts that do not have any "NET:x" tag. So only hosts that have a NET:$BBLOCATION tag will be tested.
With this option, hosts with no NET: tag are included in the test, so that all hosts that either have a matching NET: tag, or no NET: tag at all are tested.

--frequenttestlimit=N

Used with the bbretest-net.sh(1) bbgen extension. This option determines how long failed tests remain in the frequent-test queue. The default is 1800 seconds (30 minutes).

--timelimit=N

Causes bbtest-net to generate a warning if the run-time of bbtest-net exceeds N seconds. By default N is set to the value of BBSLEEP, so a warning triggers if the network tests cannot complete in the time given for one cycle of the BBNET server. Apart from the warning, this option has no effect, i.e. it will not terminate bbtest-net prematurely. So to eliminate any such warnings, use this option with a very high value of N.

--huge=N

Warn if the response from a TCP test is more than N bytes. If you see from the bbtest status report that you are transferring large amounts of data for your tests, you can enable this option to see which tests have large replies.
Default: 0 (disabled).

--validity=N

Make the test results valid for N minutes before they go purple. By default test results are valid for 30 minutes; if you run bbtest-net less often than that, the results will go purple before the next run of bbtest-net. This option lets you change how long the status is valid.

OPTIONS FOR TESTS OF THE SIMPLE TCP SERVICES

--checkresponse[=COLOR]

When testing well-known services (e.g. FTP, SSH, SMTP, POP-2, POP-3, IMAP, NNTP and rsync), bbtest-net will look for a valid service-specific "OK" response. If another reponse is seen, this will cause the test to report a warning (yellow) status. Without this option, the response from the service is ignored.
The optional color-name is used to select a color other than yellow for the status message when the response is wrong. E.g. "--checkresponse=red" will cause a "red" status message to be sent when the service does not respond as expected.

--no-flags

By default, bbtest-net sends some extra information in the status messages, called "flags". These are used by bbgen e.g. to pick different icons for reversed tests when generating the Xymon webpages. This option makes bbtest-net omit these flags from the status messages.

--shuffle

By default, TCP tests run roughly in the order that the hosts are listed in the bb-hosts file. If you have many tests for one server, this may result in an exceptionally large load when Xymon is testing it because Xymon will perform a lot of tests at the same time. To avoid this, the --shuffle option reorders the sequence of tests so they are spread randomly across all of the servers tested.

OPTIONS FOR THE PING TEST

Note: bbtest-net uses the program defined by the FPING environment to execute ping-tests - by default, that is the hobbitping(1) utility. See hobbitserver.cfg(5) for a description of how to customize this, e.g. if you need to run it with "sudo" or a similar tool.

--ping

Enables bbtest-net's ping test. The column name used for ping test results is defined by the PINGCOLUMN environment variable in hobbitserver.cfg(5).
If not specifed, bbtest-net uses the CONNTEST environment variable to determine if it should perform the ping test or not. So if you prefer to use another tool to implement ping checks, either set the CONNTEST environment variable to false, or run bbtest-net with the "--noping".

--noping

Disable the connectivity test.

--trace

--notrace

Enable/disable the use of traceroute when a ping-test fails. Performing a traceroute for failed ping tests is a slow operation, so the default is not to do any traceroute, unless it is requested on a per-host basis via the "trace" tag in the bb-hosts(5) entry for each host. The "--trace" option changes this, so the default becomes to run traceroute on all hosts where the ping test fails; you can then disable it on specific hosts by putting a "notrace" tag on the host-entry.

OPTIONS FOR HTTP (WEB) TESTS

--content=CONTENTTESTNAME

Determines the name of the column Xymon displays for content checks. The default is "content". If you have used the "cont.sh" or "cont2.sh" scripts earlier, you may want to use "--content=cont" to report content checks using the same test name as these scripts do.

OPTIONS FOR SSL CERTIFICATE TESTS

--ssl=SSLCERTTESTNAME

Determines the name of the column Xymon displays for the SSL certificate checks. The default is "sslcert".

--no-ssl

Disables reporting of the SSL certificate check.

--sslwarn=N

--sslalarm=N

Determines the number of days before an SSL certificate expires, where bbtest-net will generate a warning or alarm status for the SSL certificate column.

--sslbits=N

Enables checking that the encryption supported by the SSL protocol uses an encryption key of at least N bits. E.g. to trigger an alert if your SSL-enabled website supports less than 128 bits of encryption, use "--sslbits=128". Note: This can be enabled on a per-host basis using the "sslbits=N" setting in bb-hosts(5)

DEBUGGING OPTIONS

--no-update

Don't send any status updates to the BBDISPLAY server. Instead, all messages are dumped to stdout.

--timing

Causes bbtest-net to collect information about the time spent in different parts of the program. The information is printed on stdout just before the program ends. Note that this information is also included in the status report sent with the "--report" option.

--debug

Dumps a bunch of status about the tests as they progress to stdout.

--dump[=before|=after|=both]

Dumps internal memory structures before and/or after the tests have executed.

INFORMATIONAL OPTIONS

--help or -?

Provide a summary of available commandline options.

--version

Prints the version number of bbtest-net

--services

Dump the list of defined TCP services bbtest-net knows how to test. Do not run any tests.

USING COOKIES IN WEB TESTS

If the file $BBHOME/etc/cookies exist, cookies will be read from this file and sent along with the HTTP requests when checking websites. This file is in the Netscape Cookie format, see http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html for details on this format. The curl(1) utility can output a file in this format if run with the "--cookie-jar FILENAME" option.

ABOUT SSL CERTIFICATE CHECKS

When bbtest-net tests services that use SSL- or TLS-based protocols, it will check that the server certificate has not expired. This check happens automatically for https (secure web), pop3s, imaps, nntps and all other SSL-enabled services (except ldap, see LDAP TESTS below).

All certificates found for a host are reported in one status message.

Note: On most systems, the end-date of the certificate is limited to Jan 19th, 2038. If your certificate is valid after this date, bbtest-net will report it as valid only until Jan 19, 2038. This is due to limitations in your operating system C library.

LDAP TESTS

ldap testing can be done in two ways. If you just put an "ldap" or "ldaps" tag in bb-hosts, a simple test is performed that just verifies that it is possible to establish a connection to the port running the ldap service (389 for ldap, 636 for ldaps).

Instead you can put an LDAP URI in bb-hosts. This will cause bbtest-net to initiate a full-blown LDAP session with the server, and do an LDAP search for the objects defined by the URI. This requires that bbtest-net was built with LDAP support, and relies on an existing LDAP library to be installed. It has been tested with OpenLDAP 2.0.26 (from Red Hat 9) and 2.1.22. The Solaris 8 system ldap library has also been confirmed to work for un-encrypted (plain ldap) access.

The format of LDAP URI's is defined in RFC 2255. LDAP URLs look like this:

  ldap://hostport/dn[?attrs[?scope[?filter[?exts]]]]
where:
  hostport is a host name with an optional ":portnumber"
  dn is the search base
  attrs is a comma separated list of attributes to request
  scope is one of these three strings:
    base one sub (default=base)
  filter is filter
  exts are recognized set of LDAP and/or API extensions.
Example:
  ldap://ldap.example.net/dc=example,dc=net?cn,sn?sub?(cn=*)

All "bind" operations to LDAP servers use simple authentication. Kerberos and SASL are not supported. If your LDAP server requires a username/password, use the "ldaplogin" tag to specify this, cf. bb-hosts(5) If no username/password information is provided, an anonymous bind will be attempted.

SSL support requires both a client library and an LDAP server that support LDAPv3; it uses the LDAP "STARTTLS" protocol request after establishing a connection to the standard (non-encrypted) LDAP port (usually port 389). It has only been tested with OpenSSL 2.x, and probably will not work with any other LDAP library.

The older LDAPv2 experimental method of tunnelling normal LDAP traffic through an SSL connection - ldaps, running on port 636 - is not supported, unless someone can explain how to get the OpenLDAP library to support it. This method was never formally described in an RFC, and implementations of it are non-standard.

For a discussion of the various ways of running encrypted ldap, see
http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200305/msg00079.html
http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200305/msg00084.html
http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200201/msg00042.html
http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200206/msg00387.html

When testing LDAP URI's, all of the communications are handled by the ldap library. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain the SSL certificate used by the LDAP server, and it will not show up in the "sslcert" column.

USING MULTIPLE NETWORK TEST SYSTEMS

If you have more than one system running network tests - e.g. if your network is separated by firewalls - then is is problematic to maintain multiple bb-hosts files for each of the systems. bbtest-net supports the NET:location tag in bb-hosts(5) to distinguish between hosts that should be tested from different network locations. If you set the environment variable BBLOCATION e.g. to "dmz" before running bbtest-net, then it will only test hosts that have a "NET:dmz" tag in bb-hosts. This allows you to keep all of your hosts in the same bb-hosts file, but test different sets of hosts by different BBNET systems.

BBTEST-NET INTERNALS

bbtest-net first reads the bb-services file to see which network tests are defined. It then scans the bb-hosts file, and collects information about the TCP service tests that need to be tested. It picks out only the tests that were listed in the bb-services file, plus the "dns", "dig" and "ntp" tests - those tests that bb-network.sh would normally use the "bbnet" tool to test.

It then runs two tasks in parallel: First, a separate process is started to run the "hobbitping" tool for the connectivity tests. While hobbitping is busy doing the "ping" checks, bbtest-net runs all of the TCP-based network tests.

All of the TCP-based service checks are handled by a connection tester written specifically for this purpose. It uses only standard Unix-style network programming, but relies on the Unix "select(2)" system-call to handle many simultaneous connections happening in parallel. Exactly how many parallel connections are being used depends on your operating system - the default is FD_SETSIZE/4, which amounts to 256 on many Unix systems.

You can choose the number of concurrent connections with the "--concurrency=N" option to bbtest-net.

Connection attempts timeout after 10 seconds - this can be changed with the "--timeout=N" option.

Both of these settings play a part in deciding how long the testing takes. A conservative estimate for doing N TCP tests is:

   (1 + (N / concurrency)) * timeout

In real life it will probably be less, as the above formula is for every test to require a timeout. Since the most normal use of BB is to check for services that are active, you should have a lot less timeouts.

The "ntp" and "rpcinfo" checks rely on external programs to do each test. Thus, they perform only marginally better than the standard bb-network.sh script.

FILES

~/server/etc/bb-services

This file contains definitions of TCP services that bbtest-net can test. Definitions for a default set of common services is built into bbtest-net, but these can be overridden or supplemented by defining services in the bb-services file. See bb-services(5) for details on this file.

$BBHOME/etc/netrc - authentication data for password-protected webs

If you have password-protected sites, you can put the usernames and passwords for these here. They will then get picked up automatically when running your network tests. This works for web-sites that use the "Basic" authentication scheme in HTTP. See ftp(1) for details - a sample entry would look like this

   machine www.acme.com login fred password Wilma1
Note that the machine-name must be the name you use in the http://machinename/ URL setting - it need not be the one you use for the system-name in Xymon.

$BBHOME/etc/cookies

This file may contain website cookies, in the Netscape HTTP Cookie format. If a website requires a static cookie to be present in order for the check to complete, then you can add this cookie to this file, and it will be sent along with the HTTP request. To get the cookies into this file, you can use the "curl --cookie-jar FILE" to request the URL that sets the cookie.

$BBTMP/*.status - test status summary

Each time bbtest-net runs, if any tests fail (i.e. they result in a red status) then they will be listed in a file name TESTNAME.[LOCATION].status. The LOCATION part may be null. This file is used to determine how long the failure has lasted, which in turn decides if this test should be included in the tests done by bbretest-net.sh(1)
It is also used internally by bbtest-net when determining the color for tests that use the "badconn" or "badTESTNAME" tags.

$BBTMP/frequenttests.[LOCATION]

This file contains the hostnames of those hosts that should be retested by the bbretest-net.sh(1) test tool. It is updated only by bbtest-net during the normal runs, and read by bbretest-net.sh.