[Asterisk-Users] Questions about alarm reporting in Asterisk

[John Todd]

At 9:16 PM +0100 on 4/21/04, Fran Boon wrote:
>On Wed, 2004-04-21 at 18:41, Ernest W. Lessenger wrote:
>>  We use a package called Nagios to monitor our servers, which works quite
>>  well. It has the ability to track service and host dependencies so you don't
>>  get flooded with a bunch of "service down" alerts when the real cause is a
>>  bad switch (or similar).
>
>Nagios is great :)
>Here is some basic info on integration with Asterisk:
>http://www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk+monitoring
>
>>  It would seem logical for someone (hah!) to write a res_snmp.c for asterisk
>>  that would expose a lot of asterisk's internal data. This would seem a
>>  logical step toward writing fully functional monitoring applications as
>>  well. The module would allow clients to add themselves to the list and
>>  receive traps, as well as check for the current status of various variables.
>>  <brainstorming>
>>  Okay, this may be over the top, but here goes. Write an asterisk application
>>  that sends (and receives) status information to another box over the PSTN.
>>  My idea is not only to use this as a way to verify that * is running, but as
>>  a way to RELIABLY tell that a remote * box is actively accepting incoming
>>  calls. It wouldn't have to be anything complicated, just a heartbeat and
>>  some basic details to let the caller know that "yes, I'm alive and accepting
>>  calls over this line".
>>  Simplified protocol:
>>  1) Monitoring box calls up and says (in DTMF):
>>	#<my CallerID>#<extension I am trying to reach>#<I'm a machine, so
>>  reply in DTMF instead of voice>#<the secret code is>#
>>  2) The remote box says
>>	#<your CallerID>#<Your DNIS>#<yes I will accept a call to that
>>  number>#
>>  3) Monitoring box acknowledges and disconnects
>>  4) Remote box disconnects
>>  5) Monitoring box decides whether it likes the answers it received and
>>  performs actions accordingly.
>>  </brainstorming>
>
>Great stuff - I've added this & the other comments to the Wiki page :)
>- please keep adding stuff there as it's an important area where we
>could benefit from sharing ideas (& implementations!)
>
>F

There is an SNMP module for Asterisk already, but it is apparently 
not widely used.

I've added this to the Wiki as well in response to questions about 
SNMP for Asterisk:

http://www.faino.it/en/ast-ax-snmpd.html

I took a look through this code, and it seemed to have quite a few 
nice things that could easily be monitored through the interface 
provided.  Instead of traps (yuck!) it allows polls, which could then 
be graphed with RRDTool or monitored with Nagios easily enough...

Lots of work yet to be done on it, I'm sure, but I'm sure there are 
good coders out there who could submit patches and updates to it.  If 
I had time I'd implement SNMPv3 into all my * servers for 
monitoring...

JT