So, you want to monitor the RAID on your FreeBSD servers? Install Nagios and use this plugin to track their status.

License

CheckVinum is licensed under the terms of the GPL.

Installing CheckVinum

Put check_vinum and check_vinum_wrapper somewhere reasonable, such as /usr/local/libexec/nagios.

I strongly suggest configuring SuDo^? so that the user nagios can execute the check_vinum_wrapper command as root. This way, the Nagios process can get a status report from Vinum, but it has no ability to send any other (potentially destructive) commands. In fact, you'll have to modify check_vinum yourself if you do not want to use SuDo^? for some reason.

Configuring SuDo^?

I have these entries in my sudoers file:

Cmnd_Alias      NAGIOS_PLUGINS =         /usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_vinum_wrapper

nagios          ALL = (root) NOPASSWD: NAGIOS_PLUGINS

Do this on every machine that will be running CheckVinum.

Running CheckVinum Locally

Call check_vinum like any other plugin, but leave off the $HOSTADDRESS$ argument.

Create a new check command that calls check_vinum without any arguments. Example:

# 'check_vinum' command definition
define command{
        command_name    check_vinum
        command_line    $USER1$/check_vinum
        }

Running CheckVinum Remotely

Create a new check command that uses the check_by_ssh command to execute check_vinum on the remote machine. Example:

# 'check_by_ssh' command definition
define command{
        command_name    check_vinum_remote
        command_line    $USER1$/check_by_ssh -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -C /usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_vinum
        }

Note that you have to create a passwordless SSH key to connect to an account on the remote machine. Follow the standard security practices when you set up that account.

Message codes

The plugin returns a lot of information on one line. The status codes are:

Abbr	Status name
Non-error codes
dwn	down
up	up
Warning codes
crs	crashed
flt	empty
ini	flaky
obs	initializing
obs	obsolete
reb	reborn
ref	referenced
rev	reviving
stl	stale
Critical codes
crp	corrupt
dgr	degraded
flk	faulty

The object-type codes are:

D	Disk
S	Subdisk
P	Plex
V	Volume

All of the warning and critical codes are joined together on one line, such as:

D:ref-2,S:stl-1,crs-2

That message means that there are:

• Two referenced disks
• One stale subdisk
• Two crashed subdisks

Notes

CheckVinum is quite configurable. Feel free to assign your own failure levels to the various result codes that vinum can return. For example, on my systems a status of "down" is perfectly acceptable, since that means an administrator has deliberately stopped an object. If this is a problem on your system, edit the %sttable variable at the top of the program to suit. If you change

'down'         => ['dwn', 0],

to

'down'         => ['dwn', 2],

then "down" objects will be reported as critical errors.

• Set ALLOWTOPICCHANGE = KirkStrauser^?

-- KirkStrauser - 13 Jun 2003