5.3. Configuration Options Reference

This is the location of the logfile. It is not the filename, but the directory in which the file should be. The file will be named server.log within the specified directory.

Default value (Unix): /var/log/sysorb

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config

Whether the server should log critical internal errors.

Default value: true

Whether the database subsystem should log information about how it spends its time.

Default value: false

Whether the database subsystem should log informational messages.

Default value: false

Whether the database subsystem should log information about certain situations, e.g. another part of sysorb requesting infomation about an object which does not exist in the database. Please note that there can be perfectly valid reasons for such queries, for instance the NetCheck engine requesting information about a NetCheck wich has just been deleted by a user.

Default value: false

Whether the time series database subsystem should log informational messages.

Default value: false

Whether the network connection manager should log informational messages.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding Diffie-Hellman prime/generator pair generation.

Default value: false

Whether the SNMP subsystem should log informational messages.

Default value: false

Whether the SNMP subsystem should log informational messages about the values it receive.

Default value: false

Whether general debugging information should be logged.

Default value: false

Whether the event-scheduler should log informational messages. These messages are usually not very interesting.

Default value: false

Whether the central decision-making process (the alarm logic) should log informational messages.

Default value: false

Whether the alert dispatcher should log informational messages, which can be used for troubleshooting mail-server or modem dialing problems. Set this to "true" if you have problems getting alerts via e-mail or numerical pager.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages from the NetCheck module.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages from the ICMP (ping) module.

Default value: false

This option enables informational regarding the loading of the SSL library used for SSL based NetChecks..

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages from the Report module.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages from the Forecast module.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding auto upgrade of the agents.

Default value: false

This option enables logging when the SysOrb Server receives scan requests from agent machines.

Default value: false

This option enables logging about the NodeClass check confiugration engine.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding grid routing.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding grid link establishment.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding grid station to station communication.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding the grid RPC communication.

Default value: false

This option enables informational messages regarding grid synchronisation.

Default value: false

This is the file from which the database back-end reads the layout information which the Web-interface needs.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb/layout.conf

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config\layout.conf

This is the file in which the database back-end will store the time-series database data. This file can become rather large if many devices are monitored. The file grows with approximately 1 megabyte per monitored check.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb/main.tsdb

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config\main.tsdb

This is the file that keeps all configuration information about hosts, services, devices, users, groups, etc. It is the entire hierarchical configuration of your monitored systems and their users. This file also keeps passwords for user accounts, so you should make sure that its permissions are set correctly if you run the SysOrb Server on a multiuser system with other interactive users.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb/main.odb

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config\main.odb

This is the journal file for the aforementioned main.odb meta-data database file. The journal provides an efficient method for the SysOrb Server to guarantee data consistency in the meta database. The default size of this file is 8 megabytes, and the size will never change during the lifetime of the database.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb/main.odbj

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config\main.odbj

This option specifies how many ODB blocks (default block size is 8 KiB) the sysorb-dbms process will keep in memory, to speed up normal database queries and other common operations. The larger the value, the more memory the database process will consume. The memory overhead can be estimated by multiplying the number of blocks with the block size - for example, 4096 blocks will consume approximately 4096*8 KiB = 32 megabytes of memory.

Default value: 4096

This option specifies how many data records (per check) there can be in the write buffer allocated allocated for each check. Enlarging this buffer will give the time series more freedom in choosing when to flush data to disk, possibly increasing performance. The cost of an increase is a larger memory footprint of the sysorb-tsdb process.

Default value: 64

This option controls how many entries we want in the entry write buffer before we start flushing entries to disk. The larger this number, the fewer writes to disk will be needed. It is, however, advised that this number stays well below the tsdb_buffer_entries parameter, so that the write buffers do not fill up. If a write buffer is filled, flushing of the buffer will be forced, thereby limiting the freedom the database has to choose a convenient time to flush the data.

Default value: one quarter of tsdb_buffer_entries

This is the maximum allowed age (measured in seconds) of an entry in the write buffer. If an entry older than this is found in a write buffer, entries from that buffer will be flushed (no matter if tsdb_buffer_write_min is exceeded or not. The larger this option is, the more freedom the database will have in choosing when to flush data. However, if the SysOrb Server machine loses power or is in some other way shut down without giving sysorb-tsdb a chance to flush the write buffers from memory to disk, all records in the write buffers will be lost. This option is used to limit the maximum amount of data loss.

Default value: 600

The time series database will go through its live write-buffers in a round-robin fashion. Each second, it will consider tsdb_buffer_flush_batch buffers, and inspect whether each inspected buffer should be flushed (either because of tsdb_buffer_age_max or tsdb_buffer_write_min). This option controls how many buffers are inspected each second. The higher the number, the greater the potential peak workload on the database. If this number is low, compared to the number of checks in the system, it can however take a long time for the database to actually discover that a buffer holds entries that are too old and should be flushed.

Default value: 8

This is the TCP port on which the Connection Manager will listen for incoming connections. The standard SysOrb port is 3241, and there should be no reason to change this. If you must use another port, make sure that you change the port number both in the server, the agents and the web interface configuration files.

Default value: 3241

This is the maximum number of concurrent connections the connection manager will accept. The number should be sufficiently low not to overload the server, and sufficiently high to allow service of both agents and user interface. Both agent and user interface connections are only active when needed, so this number can be less than the number of agents and active users on the SysOrb Monitoring System. If you are seeing many messages in the SysOrb Server log about connections being expired because high or low-water pressure, and your SysOrb Server can handle the higher load, you should raise this number.

Default value: 300

This is the maximum number (in thousands) of check-in results the connection manager will accept holding in memory, before it starts refusing agent connections. The purpose of this limit, is to prevent "check-in storms" - a situation in which a large number of agents simultaneously check in a very large number of results, causing the server to slow down, in turn causing even more data to queue up. By limiting the number of results held in memory and asking the agents to "check back later", the server can limit the load and prevent the overload. If this number is set too low, you may see the server refusing agent checkins even though it is not too heavily loaded.

Default value: 10 (thousands)

This option defines how often a single SysOrb agent may request configuration from the SysOrb server. It is given as a number of seconds. Under normal operation, an Agent will only request this information when re-started. If this limit is reached it usually points towards a problem with an agent restarting over and over. There should be no reason to increase this limit.

Default value: 600

This option defines how often a single SysOrb agent may request configuration from the SysOrb server. When an agent has requested information this many times in a row, the above rate limit will be enforced.

Default value: 5

This option specifies the directory where the Network Connection Manager should look for packages for the agent autoupgrade. The directory is automatically scanned once in a while.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb/upgrade

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Upgrade

This is the number of simultaneous TCP-based NetChecks that can run at any given time. Checking mail-server or web-server response times, or the response time of any other TCP based service, will cause a check program to run. This number limits how many check programs can run at any given time. The default value should be sufficient for a very large number of NetCheck services, as most checks only run for a few milliseconds each. Setting this value too low will cause checks to be queued but not lost. Setting it too high will consume more system memory and possibly slow down the entire system thereby reducing the accuracy of the NetChecks. It is better to leave this value low than set it too high.

Default value (Unix): 32

Default value (NT/2000): 20

This option points to the configuration file for the custom NetChecks. An example of how such a file should be written can be seen in the custom_netcheck.conf.sample in the same directory as the main configuration file.

This option defines the minimal spacing between ICMP ECHO REQUEST packets in microseconds, increase this if your network equipment drops ICMP packets because of buffer overruns.

Default value: 10000 μs

The maximal time SysOrb will cache the result of DNS lookups in seconds.

Default value: 86400 s

In the event that the NetCheck engine cannot locate the SSL-library, the excact path to the library can be specified using the libssl option. If the libssl option is set, the NetCheck engine will only try to load the exact specified library. Otherwise it will try a list of possible names for the library, and use the first one that loads.

Default value: not set

This is the directory that will be used as working directory by the server once it is running. It does not matter much what this is set to, if all other filenames use absolute paths (which they should). On UN*X systems and Linux this option lets you set the working directory to somewhere outside of e.g. /home thereby allowing you to unmount /home without shutting down the SysOrb Server. On Microsoft Windows NT / 2000 this option has no other effect than providing a base path for relative filenames.

Default value (Unix): /var/sysorb

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir

The SysOrb server will search this directory for the sysorb.lic license file.

Default value (most Unix'es): /etc/sysorb

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Config

This file is used for storing various non-critical values. The sysorb user must have write access to this file.

Default value (most Unix'es): /var/sysorb/variables.server

This location prefix is used when building up the absolute filenames of files used internally by SysOrb to set up communications between the various processes that make up the SysOrb server.

Default value (most Unix'es): /var/sysorb/smem

Default value (NT/2000): SMem

Total size of the shared memory region used by the SysOrb processes for intercommunication.

A too small value will cause excessive communication overhead on a busy server, while a too large value will waste too much memory and may exceed operating system or architecture limitations on memory mapping sizes.

Default value: 128

The resource directory is the directory where pictures and css-files used for email-alerts and -reports are kept.

Default value (most Unix'es): /var/sysorb/resources

Default value (NT/2000): install-dir\Resources

This option controls whether this SysOrb server should send important information about its health to Evalesco A/S. If enabled the SysOrb server will try uploading the information using the HTTP protocol.

Default value: false

In order to export or import sensitive data like passwords and agent keys you need to enable this option. This option should _only_ be set to true during import or export. When enabled the system in vulnerable to password and agent key sniffing among other things..

Default value: false

The maximum number of parallel jobs to run during AutoDiscovery.

Default value: 8

When a sysorb agent checks in to the server, but is not already configured on the server, a candidate node is created. This candidate node can be viewed in the web interface and used to create a real node. This option allows you to limit the number of candidate nodes that can be on the server at one time. Futher agents will be rejected without notice.

Default value: 10

The SysOrb server will try to have this number of Diffie-Hellman prime/generator pairs precalculated for future agents checking in.

Only if you have many agents registering with the SysOrb server in quick succession will it make sense to increate this value.

Default value: 5

The SysOrb server will use a Diffie-Hellman prime/generator pair for negotiating secret keys with this many agents before discarding it.

Only if you have many agents registering with the SysOrb server in quick succession will it make sense to increase this value.

Default value: 1

If this option is enabled, the SysOrb server will perform no NetChecks, generate no reports, not do AutoDiscovery, or take any other action. It will still accept incoming connection from the web interface and from SysOrb agents. This option is mostly useful for recovery, if one has accidentally started an AutoDiscovery, SNMP scan or the like, that turns out to slow down or crash the SysOrb server.

Default value: false

This is the name of the mail-server (a server accepting SMTP connections, and willing to relay for the SysOrb Server). It should be set to the name of a local mail relay on your site.

Default value: localhost

This is the domain name that will be used in the HELO mail_from SMTP negotiation with the mail server, when an alert is sent via e-mail.

Default value: localdomain

This is the e-mail address that will be put in the From: field of all e-mails sent by the SysOrb Server. It should be a valid e-mail address of the SysOrb Server administrator in the form of: user or user@host.

Default value: root@localhost.localdomain

Setting this option to a value, will make all SMS's sent via email to SMS gateways have the same subject. This can be useful, if the email to SMS gateway requires that the email has identification in the subject.

If the SysOrb Server has a lot of agents configured, it sometimes sends out premature alerts, for agent checkin etc. In order to prevent this, the alert_defer_at_boot can specify for how long in minutes the SysOrb Server will defer sending out alerts, when it is started.

Default value: 2

If an alert transmission fails, this is the delay in seconds that the SysOrb Alert module will wait until it re-tries the transmission.

Default value: 30

This option specifies the maximum number of times the SysOrb Alert module will attempt the transmission of a single alert message.

Default value: 5

This option controls wether SysOrb will log alert path usage to the nodes incident log.

Default value: false

This is the URL for the Web-interface that will be put in the alert messages, for the user to click on. It should point on the preferred Web-interface for the server.

Default value: http://localhost/sysorb

This is the name of the modem device on your system. On Unix-like platforms, please make sure that the sysorb user has both read and write access to the device pointed to by this option, as the server will otherwise be unable to use the modem.

Default value (Unix): /dev/modem

Default value (NT/2000): COM1

This comma separated list specifies the capabilities of the attached modem. The possible elements are

Default value: page

This string is sent to the modem before a number is dialed.

Default value: ATE0 S7=20 S8=2

If you use the Siemens M20 GSM box for sending SMS messages directly to your cellular phone, you must supply the PIN code for the SIM card here, if one is needed for the SIM card to work.

Use this option to set the baud-rate of the serial port SysOrb uses to communicator with the modem. The allowed values are 200, 300, 600, 1200, 2400, 3800, 9600, 19200, 38400.

Default value: 19200

Use this option to set the maximal time to elapse between the ATD and ATH commands, when SysOrb is dialing a numerical pager (or an analog phone.)

Default value: 30

If SysOrb sees more that this number of entries in one SNMP table during a scan, the rest will be ignored.

You may increase this value if any of your SNMP devices has huge tables. Please note that the SysOrb web interface may navigate slowly in such cases.

Default value: 500

This SysOrb station (server) will generate RSA station keys with this many bits.

Default value: 1024

This SysOrb station will require RSA keys from other stations to be at least this many bits.

Default value: 1024

This SysOrb station will generate AES session keys with this many bits

Default value: 256

This SysOrb station will require AES session keys from other stations to be at least this many bits.

Default value: 128

Determines how often session keys should be replaced

Default value: 600

Default TTL for grid messages

Default value: 8

The maximum number of pending updates that a SysOrb master will keep track of. If the satellite fails to acknowledge them, the master will kick the satellite.

Default value: 8192

The maximum number of timeseries being propagated from the satellite at one time

Default value: 32