Presentation of the Shinken project

Welcome to the Shinken project.

Shinken is a new, Nagios compatible monitoring tool, written in Python. Its main goal is to give users a flexible architecture for their monitoring system that is designed to scale to large environments. It’s as simple as in all the marketing “cloud computing” slides, but here, it’s real!

Shinken is backwards-compatible with the Nagios configuration standard and plug-ins. It works on any operating system and architecture that supports Python, which includes Windows and GNU/Linux.

How to install Shinken

You just need to add a shinken user (in the shinken group) on your system:

useradd --user-group shinken
usermod --lock shinken

First way: all in a directory (ugly but quick way ;)

Then move the shinken directory and give it to the shinken user:

mv shinken /usr/local
chown -R shinken:shinken /usr/local/shinken

Second way: district directory (clean way)

You can install really the application by using the setup.py script. It will install the shinken library in the python path, create the /etc/shinken and /var/lib/shinken directory (you can change them in the setup.cfg file before launching setup.py). You will need the python-setuptools package for it. Then just run:

sudo python setup.py install --install-scripts=/usr/bin/

For the compilation part in both way it's easy: there is no compilation!

Third way: install script

Note : NEVER EVER MIX THE DIFFERENTS INSTALLATION WAYS. THIS WILL RUN YOU IN BIG TROUBLES. IF YOU CHOOSE ONE WAY DO NOT TRY OTHERS OR CLEAN UP BEFORE.

You can use the install utility script located at the root of the shinken sources. The script creates the user and group, installs all dependencies and then it installs shinken. It is compatible with Debian, Ubuntu, Centos/Redhat 5.x and 6.x The only requirement is an internet connection for the server on which you want to install shinken. It also allows to modify the installation folder in a configuration file.

If you want shinken installed in seconds (default in /usr/local/shinken), just run :

install -i

see install.d/README file for further informations.

How to update

If you used the setup.py way, launch ::

sudo python setup.py update --install-scripts=/usr/bin/

If you used the install script way :

1 - grab the latest shinken archive and extract it's content

2 - cd into the resulting folder

3 - backup shinken configuration plugins and addons and copy the backup id:

./install -b

4 - remove shinken (if you installed addons with the installer say no to the question about removing the addons):

./install -u

5 - install shinken:

./install -i

6 - restore the backup:

./install -r backupid

Requirements

shinken requires

• Python 2.4 or higher (Python 2.6 or higher is recommended if you want to use the Web interface)
• setuptools or distribute for installation (see below).
• Pyro
• multiprocessing Python package when using Python 2.4 or 2.5 (multiprocessing is already included in Python 2.6 and higher)

If (and only if) you plan to use the livestatus module or the web interface, I'll also need

• simplejson
• pysqlite__

Just untar and launch python setup.py install (and be sure to have installed the python-devel package too).

For Python, it should be okay with almost all distribution.

Under ubuntu, you can grab the Pyro module with:

sudo apt-get install pyro

Under other distributions, you can search for it:

yum search pyro

And if you do not find it, you can install it from PyPI:

easy_install pyro

And that's all folks :)

Where is the configuration?

The configuration is where you put the etc directory (in /usr/local/shinken/etc for a quick and dirty install, /etc/shinken for a clean one).

The nagios.cfg file is meant to be shared with Nagios. All Shinken specific objects (like links to daemons or realms) are in the file shinken-specific.cfg.

Do I need to change my existing Nagios configuration? ===================================================

No, there is no need to change the existing configuration - unless you want to add some new hosts and services. Once you are comfortable with Shinken you can start to use its unique and powerful features.

How to run Shinken

Quick and dirty way

It's easy, there is a already launch script for you:

shinken/bin/launch_all.sh

Clean way

The setup.py install some init.d scripts, let's use them:

/etc/init.d/shinken-scheduler start
/etc/init.d/shinken-poller start
/etc/init.d/shinken-reactionner start
/etc/init.d/shinken-broker start
/etc/init.d/shinken-arbiter start

Install script

The install script also install some init.d scripts and enable them at boot time and start them right after install process end.

Known bugs

None that we know of. :)

If you find one, please post it to the bug and issue tracker : https://github.com/naparuba/shinken/issues

How to run uninstall Shinken

Clean all :)

There is a script called clean.sh in the source directory for this task. Beware, it will supress all Shinken related files!

If you used install script

cd into shinken source folder and run::

./install -u