moshel/history.txt

MoSheL: MOnitoring with SHEll Locally

HISTORY

First I wrote plugins for the Nagios (formerly NetSaint), especially the
various versions of ASLrules (for Astaro Forewall, now sold as Sophos UTM).

As most of the servers/services I want to monitor are remote systems,
traditional NMS (relying on close-looped and/or unencrypted sessions) are
either big, complicated to install for safe remote monitoring, ressource
intense (when doing remote checks), lack a status history or a combination
thereof.

Thus I wrote a small, easily configured system: MoSSHe, later MoSShE.
It primarily was intended for monitoring of a handful of typical internet 
systems. The more recent versions supported system and grouping features 
monitoring of serious numbers of systems.

Constant changes in APIs and output formatting of tools made a proper
support and maintenance difficult. Plus calculating averages etc. in
BASH (which is nototiously SLOW) put a real strain on small monitoring
servers like a RaspberryPi.

So after 17 years after the first MoSSHe installment and 11 years after
the big MoSShE rewrite this is the next iteration: even smaller, more
decentralized, easier to adapt to local peculiarities.

For bug reports and suggestions or if you just want to talk to me
please contact me at volker.tanger@wyae.de

Updates will be available at  http://www.wyae.de/software/moshel/
please check there for updates prior to submitting patches!


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todo:
	- BUG (to fix): locking

	- NEED: move temp. directory (status, flap detection) to increase
		SD-card/SSD lifetime
		needs: protection against symlink attacks

	- want: SLA reports, downtimes/availability
	- want: (re)check on Bourne-SH and Busybox compatibility

	- maybe: modular checks for easier installation by installed software
		(specific checks for MySQL, postfix, dovecot, apache, ...)
	- maybe: CheckResultIsExactly (String-Match)
		can be done with 
		"CheckCountMoreThan TITLE "script" '/MATCH/{print $0}' 0 "ERRORMSG"
	- maybe: CheckResultDoesNotContain (String-Match)
		can be done with 
		"CheckCountLessThan TITLE "script" '/MATCH/{print $0}' 1 "ERRORMSG"


wanted checks (examples)
	- network bandwidth
	- AVM Fritz!Box router status
	- SNMP especially for Windows servers	
	- disk usage of single directory	  
	- remote checks: IMAP, POP3, SMTP, SAMBA, ...  
 	  (local checks for bound ports are already available)
	- KVM (and other virtualization) checks

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2024-08-27
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: corrected bugfix before: check for non-numeric values.
	
2024-08-05
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: removed old "check failed" when value is 0
	
2024-08-02
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: changed alert message (removed values) to reduce alert fatique
	
2024-07-26
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: added maintenance mode, disabling checks (just insert message)
	
2024-05-28
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: stabilized OpenDTU + Shelly queries (longer timeout, retries)
	
2024-05-16
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: added OpenDTU to example 
	  (solar generation readout for Hoymiles micro-inverters)
	
2024-05-08
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: added Shelly Gen2 API to example (e.g. for ShellyPlugS)
	
2024-05 onward
	re-licensed unter EUPL v1.2

2023-11 onward
	see the GIT repository https://git.wyae.de/WYAE/moshel

v2.1.3	2023-09-02
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* cleanup/bugfix: added "-f" to "rm" at the beginin of Centralize() to avoid error message

v2.1.2	2023-08-01
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* cleanup: deprecating Summarize()
	* feature: preparing mail alerts for individual funtions
	* bugfix: accidentally published a non-working intermediate 
 		state (bad escaping-CopyPaste, missing funcrion end)

v2.1.0	2023-05-24
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* cleanup: escaping if variables in Centralize() 
	* cleanup: removed even more from deprecated Summarize()
	* cleanup: prepared for explicit mail alerts and central 
		mail alerts

v2.0.2	2023-05-17
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: ActionOnAlert did not do anything, only mailed that 
		it did. Now added the missing command execution.

v2.0.1	2023-04-01
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: ActionOnAlert triggered on failure AND(!) resolve, 
		now on failure only.

v2.0.0	2023-03-19
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* (unlikely but) breaking change: removed unused "checks" file
	* feature: ActionOnAlert - automate e.g. restart

v1.1.1	2022-09-14
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: fix copy-paste-error (when snippet unreachable)
	* feature: create central overview page with all graphs
	* deprecate warning for Summarize()

v1.1.0	2022-09-13
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: reduce timeout for summary page 
	* cleanup: create subroutine for message outputs
	* feature: create local overview page with all graphs

v1.0.13	2022-06-12
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: correct incomplete lines in QNAP snmp check sample

v1.0.12	2022-02-19
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: added radio temperature sensor readout check
	* feature: added checks wether there are services which bound 
		TCP ports (i.e. are running)

v1.0.11	2021-11.21
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: added TLS certificate check for https

v1.0.10	2021-09-07
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: position change for mysqladmin in the new Debian 11
	* feature: convert KB/MB/GB (see RAM and HDD capacity checks)
	* feature/bug(fix): alternate memory check for Linux 
	  (the "free"-based sometimes fails for unknown reasons)

v1.0.9	2021-05-26
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: test for measuring PING times (avg.)

v1.0.8	2021-04-30
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: basic value verification (better error handling)
	* bugfix: alert if status download in SUMMARY command fails
	* feature: monitoring APC UPCs with apcaccess tool (part of apcupsd)

v1.0.7	2021-02-20
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: monitoring QNAP NAS via SNMP

v1.0.6	2020-12-15
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: corrected nonworking FlipFlop-detection

v1.0.5	2020-11-26
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: SmartMonTools SSD + HDD measurements

v1.0.4	2020-11-12
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* feature: temperature measurement for RaspberryPi4
	* bugfix: added missing removing temp diff files

v1.0.3	2020-10-30
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: alerting caused shell error messages whenver there 
	  was no alert (error was introduced in 1.0.2)
	* bugfix: wait a bit for other systems in Summary()

v1.0.2	2020-10-29
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* bugfix: alerting now without values so they do not trigger 
	  new alerts whenever an alerted state changes value
	* feature: alarm with "changed" section, to get "ok again" 
	  mails, too. 

v1.0.1	2020-10-10
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* cleanup: typos, formatting

v1.0.0	2020-10-10
    Volker Tanger <volker.tanger@wyae.de>
	* initial release


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Licensed under the EUROPEAN UNION PUBLIC LICENCE v. 1.2 (or later)
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This is free software - see attached file LICENSE_EUPL-1.2_EN.txt
and available in other languages under
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/eupl/eupl-text-eupl-12

Copyright (C) 2020- Volker Tanger

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