PRE-INSTALL

Before you unpack the packages you have to prepare your environement to install gossips without problems. This concerns the user under which gossips is running, the Perl version, some modules and other software.

• Gossips-user
  1. Create a seperate user to run gossips.

  2. This user needs the same home on all machines you want to monitor (NIS)

  3. The gossips-user needs access to all machines you want to monitor.

  4. The gossips-user does not need special privileges like root.

• Perl-5.6
  Perl v5.6 or higher is mandatory. We recommend to install it as your default perl version, but it is not necessary.
• graphics and web (optional)
  The Tests Test_LinkUp, Test_DiskGraph and Test_MailGraph need RRD-Tool. If you want to use them, you have to install RRD and fping.

   http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/
   ftp://ftp.stanford.edu/dept/networking/pub/fping
  

  The gossips-user needs then a web-folder and rights to execute cgi-files.

Unpack

Unpack as the gossips-user gossipsXX.tar.gz and change into folder gossips-XX.

Edit Makefile.PL

Fill out follwing information in Makefile.PL

$PREFIX

This is the path for the folder for the executables and the modules (folders bin and lib). (default = /home/gossips)

$USERNAME

This is the username of the gossips-user. (default = gossips)

$HOME

This is the home of the gossips-user. (default = $PREFIX)

$LOCALCONFDIR

Path for .gossips.config and .gossips.config.server. The File .gossips.config has to be on each machine that gossips monitors. (default = $HOME)

$SYSCONFDIR

Path for host.cfg and test.cfg. These files are only necessary on the server. (default = $HOME)

$SERVER

Name of the machine where the gossips-server runs

$PORT

Port number under which gossips communicates between clients and server. (default = 9001)

$WEB_ROOT

Path for the generated gossips webpage (default = $HOME/public_html)

$CGI_PATH

Path for the cgi (default = $HOME/public_html/cgi-bin)

$CGI_WWW

link to acces the cgis (default = http://your.domain.com/~$USERNAME/cgi-bin)

$WEB_MAINTAINER

name of the responsible person for the gossips web page

$EMAIL

email of the responsible person for the gossips web page

$rrdtool_lib_path

path to the perl rrd library. This is where you installed rrd. ``RRDTool_PREFIX/lib/perl''

$FPING

Path to fping. (default = /usr/local/bin/fping)

$sendmail_exec

path to the sendmail binary. (default = /usr/lib/sendmail)

$PERL_V5_6

Path to Perl v5.6 or higher. (default = /usr/local/bin/perl)

Install

You have to execute the Makefile.PL as gossips-user. Otherwise some files will have wrong access rights.

1. launch Makefile.PL with perl v5.6 or higher.

2. make

3. make install

Installed Files

After the installation the home of the user gossips will have the following contents if you used the default values in the Makefile.PL.

 .
  |-- bin/                    executables (gossips daemon and initd-scripts)
  |-- doc/                    documentation
  |-- lib/                    liberaries and modules
  |-- public_html/
  |   `-- cgi-bin/
  |
  |-- KNOWLEDGE_BASE/         Knowledge Base
  |
  |-- LOG/                    Log files of the daemons
  |
  |-- .gossips.config         local configuration files
  |-- .gossips.config.server
  |-- host.cfg                global configuration files
  `-- test.cfg