| SMOKEPING_UPGRADE(7) | SmokePing | SMOKEPING_UPGRADE(7) |
smokeping_upgrade - Notes on upgrading Smokeping
This document tries to list incompatible or otherwise user-visible changes in Smokeping versions, with instructions on how to fix any possible problems. It also sporadically mentions new features and the like.
The document currently starts with changes from 1.34 to 1.37. If you run into problems with upgrading from earlier versions, please send a description of the problems, preferably with notes on how to fix them, to the "smokeping-users" mailing list, so they can be added to this document. The same applies to any problems you find with current versions that are not documented here, of course. Patch submissions against the POD source of this file are most appreciated.
If a version is not listed, there are no known problems in upgrading to it from the previous release.
An official list of changes with each release can be found in the CHANGES file in the Smokeping distribution. This document tries to complement that with upgrading instructions etc.
To fix zooming for FF3.5 I prototype and scriptaculous have been updated. To complete the fix you have to update your basepage.html too and include effects in the scriptaculous load line
cropper/lib/scriptaculous.js?load=builder,effects,dragdrop
The new SmokeTrace tool was added to SmokePing. For setup instructions read the smoketrace manual page.
The communication protocol between master and slave has been made more secure. This requires that BOTH master and slave are upgraded to continue working.
2.3.0 is mainly about new features. Check out the reference documentation on hierarchies and the target properties parents, hidden and nomasterpoll.
The only thing you have to take a look at, is the file basepage.html.dist which got some new css properties. Without them the results of the new filter function will look quite bad.
The new master/slave functionality needs the LWP::UserAgent module from CPAN. Currently the dependency is not optional; you'll need the module even if you are only running one Smokeping instance.
This is the first Smokeping version that fully supports echoping 6. Earlier versions of the EchoPingHttp probes don't work with echoping 6 because of a command line incompatibility. (Echoping 5 is still supported, of course.)
This version also introduces three new probes using the new echoping plugin interface introduced in version 6:
See the smokeping_examples document for simple examples of using these probes.
The base.pm module defines the method ProbeUnit. Override this if your Probe does not return 'Seconds'. See the FTPtransfer.pm for inspiration.
The 'timeout' variable removed in 2.0.5 has been brought back. It is used to give the "fping" command the "-t" parameter, which apparently affects the timeout of the last ping in the counting ("-C") mode used by Smokeping.
The way Smokeping creates the self-referring links was changed once more. See the section under '2.0.4 to 2.0.5' for a description of the previous change.
The behaviour is now customizable via the "linkstyle" variable in the "General" section of the configuration file. The default is now "relative", creating links like <a href="?foo=bar">. I hope this works for everybody, but if it doesn't, see smokeping_config for the alternatives.
The 'timeout' variable has been removed. It was used to give the "fping" command the "-t" parameter, but as this parameter is only effective in "fping"'s default mode, while Smokeping uses the counting mode ("-c"), it never actually did anything.
The way Smokeping creates the self-referring links was changed. The old behaviour used the script name but not the host part, resulting in links like <a href="/path/smokeping.cgi?foo=bar">. The new behaviour uses the "cgiurl" variable: the links are always absolute like <a href="http://some.host/path/smokeping.cgi?foo=bar">.
The alert notifications can now optionally be sent only when the state of the alert changes. This means that only the first match of the alert generates a notification, subsequent matches don't. When the alert is cleared, ie. there's no match anymore, another notification is sent.
This behaviour is enabled by the "edgetrigger" variable in the "Alerts" section. The old behaviour (which sends a notification on each match) is the default.
The biggest change with the 2.0 release is that the configuration file is now parsed much more strictly. This should result in (hopefully understandable) error messages making the configuration less of the trial-and-error variety than it used to be. It also automates the generation of the configuration documentation from the source code, so the docs are now more accurate.
A smaller change worth mentioning is the inclusion of the tSmoke script (contributed by Dan McGinn-Combs) for sending summary emails on daily and weekly system status. Note that it needs the new 'tmail' variable to be defined in the config file.
The configuration syntax has stayed mostly the same, except for the issues below.
++ PROBE_CONF
lines should fix this (for any number of '+', obviously.)
The existence of a PROBE_CONF section makes smokeping exit with an error message at parse time.
Note for distributors: these lines could easily be removed automatically during upgrade.
Additionally, "probe" must now precede "host", for reasons that have to do with the current implementation of mandatory variable checking.
Both of these errors are recognized at parse time and produce error messages accordingly.
Note for distributors: the "smokeping" command now has a new '--check' option that can be used to verify the syntax of the configuration file. It might be a good idea to do this on upgrade and give the user an explanatory note if the verification fails.
Those probes offering a target-specific "timeout" variable will get a default for it from the Probes section, as noted in the previous item. This should ensure that probes that enforce the ping timeout themselves (most do) will not get killed due to timeout before they have a chance to do it.
This situation is most likely to happen if you have modified the "pings" variable in your configuration file. You'll then have to delete the old RRD file or somehow convert it to use the new parameters. The "rrdtune" command might be helpful here.
If "dyndir" is not specified, Smokeping will use the "datadir" value as the default. This should ensure that no existing setups will break.
In addition to this, some probes have had minor incompatible changes to their configuration.
The change was made to fix the confusing situation where the "host" variable was required for each actual target, but it didn't actually have any effect (as the server to be probed came from the "url" variable.)
Timeouts are now recognized properly by looking at the curl exit code. The default timeout of this probe has been raised to 10 seconds.
The command line is now executed without an intervening /bin/sh, and so quotes are not needed anymore around the User-Agent string (the "agent" parameter). Smokeping will complain if it notices quotes around the string.
Any extra arguments for "curl" can now be specified in the "extraargs" variable.
The "sleeptime" variable was changed to "mininterval" and its semantics were changed accordingly (it's now the minimum time between two queries rather than the time slept between the end of one and the start of the another.)
The "target" variable was removed. The target should now be specified in the "host" variable, like it is with all the other probes.
The recommended version for CGI::Carp is now at least 1.24, included in CGI.pm-2.82 and the Perl standard distribution starting from 5.8.1. See the smokeping_install document.
Copyright 2005 by Niko Tyni.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Niko Tyni <ntyni@iki.fi>
The other Smokeping documents, especially smokeping_config.
| 2019-02-24 | 2.7.3 |