Linux Agent doesn't generate any data

[dinobot711]

Hi, we're trying to evaluate Pandora 3.2.  We setup the server with web console and stuff (seems to work ok), and we installed an agent following the setup guide for the agent.

But when we run the daemon (/etc/init.d/pandora_agent_daemon, it runs ok and is "live", but it never generates any data.

We tried adding "verbosity 10" to the agent configuration file, but still the log file shows no errors or warnings.  We also tried adding "debug 1" and the agent runs once and generate an .xml data file which looks valid (has values for all the default modules), but in debug mode nothing gets sent to the server, and also again we see no errors or warnings in the agent log.

So the agent its not "firing", its not generating any data, and there is nothing in the log file to show us how we configured it wrong.

How we do fix this so we can finish evaluating the tool?

Our log file for the agent shows:

2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [log] - Running as user pandora
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - server_ip is 135.20.112.27
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - server_path is /var/spool/pandora/data_in
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - temporal is /tmp
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - logfile is /var/log/pandora/pandora_agent.log
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - verbosity is 10
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - interval is 300
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - debug is 0
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - udp_server is 0
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - udp_server_port is 41122
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - udp_server_auth_address is 0.0.0.0
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - server_port is 22
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - transfer_mode is ssh
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - pandora_user is pandora
2011/08/22 16:26:45 - [setup] - module_postprocess is 0,976


Again, it never shows any error or warrning messages.  I also checked /var/log/messages and see no errors or warnings.

I guess "interval" is the seconds between running all the modules?  Even though we've had the agent up for over a week, no module are ever run and no  data is every generated or sent to the server.

I will add a fake module that just does an "echo date > /tmp/log" or similar though to see if at least the modules are being invoked.

[dinobot711]

I added a fake module and it does get run every 5min. 

I presume the other default modules (like cpu load etc.) are also being run as normal.

But, still no data is ever generated.  I see nothing in here:

/var/spool/pandora/data_out/

and there is no information the Pandora log file about either success or failure of transferring data out of the spool directory to the server. (there are no errors or warnings at all.  The log file contents (from my first posting are all we have in our log file).

[dinobot711]

I guess I can run an strace on it to see what it tries to do every 5min.

This now well beyond easy to setup and configure though.  I don't think we'll choose Pandora.

[dinobot711]

Looks like our ssh connection to the server was not working correctly, I fixed up that, and made sure that the agent runs as 'pandora' and that the pandora accoiunt had ssh keys setup properly.  So now data is going through to our server, including the data for the custom module I added.

So that seems to be all good :)

I notice though when I login to Pandora, I login as "admin", is there a way to login as a normal user, so that we can allow normal users to see some of the performance graphs, but not necessarily the whole control panel?

[dinobot711]

adding users with a "read" profile works great, very glad to see this feature.

We have a lot of users though, it will be extra work for us to "sync" our users into Pandora with a "read" profile...I'll go see if we can set read access for agents, on the anonymous user (so that when users want to see the history for an agent we can just point them to a web page without them having to sign in, and without us having to sync users.

[dinobot711]

doesn't seem like there is a way to configure permissions for "anonymous" user, is there a way to do that?

[tpalacios]

In the user management section (Administration->Manage users) simply create a new profile (name it Anonymous for example) and assign the permissions you wish for that user.

Then create a new user called Anonymous and password 'none' or whatever, and assign the Anonymous profile and the group you want for that user.

And then, simply specify in the index or wherever new users are going to enter first, the user/pass to enter.

For security and functionality reasons, a user cannot have an empty password.

About adding many users to a read profile there is a tab for user massive operations in the Administration->Massive operations->Users operations section.

There, you can assign a same profile to many users at once.

Greetings.

PS: If you don't find the "Users operations" submenu when you select "Massive operations", it's a bug which has been fixed in the development version. Simply update your pandora_console files via subversion.

Greetings.