Note to Debian users: if you have installed torrus using Debian packages, all the needed dependencies outlined below have been satisfied and installation tasks carried out by the Debian package management system. The information below is provided for information purposes only and may not apply to the Debian torrus installations. Please see the README.Debian file in /usr/share/doc/torrus-common for more details.
Operating System
Torrus should easily run on any UNIX-like operation system, as long as the required components are provided.
If the OS mounts /var/run directory to a temporary filesystem, piddir
variable must point to a path on a persistent storage. Alternatively piddir
can point to /var/run itself. The default path is /var/run/torrus, and temporary filesystems do not preserve subdirectories after a system reboot.
Note to VmWare users: as recommended by Gord Philpott, Linux kernel for guest machine needs to be compiled with the following feature enabled: Character devices ---> Enhanced Real Time Clock Support
. For other guest operating systems (e.g. FreeBSD), in order to let the Torrus collector and monitor run properly, you need to add the following lines to your torrus-siteconfig.pl:
$Torrus::Scheduler::maxSleepTime = 15;
$Torrus::Scheduler::ignoreClockSkew = 1;
It is recommended to use Tobi Oetiker's SDBS tool available at <https://github.com/oetiker/sdbs>. The tool compiles all Torrus prerequisites from sources, and guarantees the version compatibility.
Perl
Perl version 5.8.1
or higher is required. Version 5.8.0
is not recommended because of memory access bugs and unpredictable behaviour. Perl interpreter should be in PATH environment variable when running ./configure
, otherwise use
./configure PERL=/path/to/perl
Torrus also supports Perl multithreading in Device Discovery engine and in the Collector. Minimum requirements are as follows: Perl version 5.8.8 or higher, threads
module version 1.41 or higher, threads::shared
module version 1.03 or higher. Older versions had bugs that were leading to severe memory leaks and instability. After installing Perl 5.8.8, you need to upgrade the threads
and threads::shared
modules manually from CPAN. If any of the requirements is not met, the installer will automatically disable the threads support in Torrus.
RRDtool
Round Robin Database Tool is available at: <http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/>.
The version that is coming with Debian and Ubuntu packages has shown some instability in Torrus WebUI -- most probably because of the bugs in graphical libraries that it uses. It is recommended to compile the tested versions with SDBS instead of using precompiled packages.
libxml2
libxml2 is the XML parser library from Gnome project <http://www.gnome.org>, available as a standalone package. Versions 2.4.23
and above were tested.
Berkeley DB version 4.2.52 or later
There are two distinct packages with slightly conflicting names: The Berkeley DB from Sleepycat Software <http://www.sleepycat.com>, and BerkeleyDB
Perl module available from CPAN. We will always refer the latter as BerkeleyDB Perl module.
The Berkeley DB database engine is used for all data storage. Versions 4.2.52
and above are recommended. Older versions of Berkeley DB had problems with database integrity in concurrent usage. By default, it installs into /usr/local/BerkeleyDB.4.2/.
Unfortunately, the BerkeleyDB Perl module cannot always find the include and library files in that directory. Thus either configure Berkeley DB with the option --prefix=/usr/local
, or you need to edit config.in in BerkeleyDB Perl module distribution.
HTTP Server
Torrus requires an HTTP server. It is compatible with the following combinations:
lighttpd, ngnix or Apache with FastCGI
Apache 1.3 with mod_perl 1.0 (not recommended and soon to be dropped)
Apache 2.x with mod_perl 2.0 (not recommended and soon to be dropped)
FastCGI is supported in Torrus version 1.0.9 or higher. It is the preferred way of using Torrus, more stable than mod_perl.
Note: Starting from Torrus version 1.0.9, libapreq2
is no longer required.
See Torrus Web Interface Reference for details on HTTP server configuration.
Perl Modules
The Perl modules required are listed below. They are all available at CPAN <http://www.cpan.org>. Some of them require other modules to be installed. You can install all required modules with the following command, executed from within the distribution directory:
perl -I `pwd`/setup_tools -MCPAN -e 'install Bundle::Torrus'
XML::LibXML
This is a Perl interface for libxml2, providing DOM standards compliant interface. It is recommended that you use version 1.54_3
or higher.
BerkeleyDB perl module
Perl interface to the database software. Version 0.19
or higher is required.
Template-Toolkit
This is a powerful set of tools for text template processing. Torrus uses it for HTML files output. See also the project homepage: <http://www.template-toolkit.org>
Proc::Daemon
Daemon invocation routines.
Net::SNMP
SNMP queries and traps interface. Version 4.0.3
or higher is required. Note: Torrus versions prior to 1.0.9 are incompatible with Net::SNMP version 6.0.0. You may need to downgrate the module to 5.2.0.
URI::Escape
Escape and unescape unsafe characters
Apache (mod_perl version 1.0)
Mod_perl is a Perl runtime environment integrated into Apache HTTP server.
Apache::Session
User session tracking helper
Date::Parse and Date::Format
Module for parsing the user input for date and time.
JSON
JSON data format support
HTTP Browser requirements
The HTTP browser must be compatible with HTML 4.01 Strict and CSS2 specifications. The tests were made with the following browsers: IE 5.5, Opera 6.12B1/Solaris, Opera 7.03/Win2K, Netscape 7.02.
Create the group torrus
and a user torrus
. The user should be a member of this group.
Add your Apache daemon user to the group torrus
. Other users that will run any of Torrus processes must be included in this group.
For example, in Solaris (you may need to specify the GID and UID numbers according to your local administration policy):
groupadd torrus
useradd -c 'Torrus Daemon' -d /usr/local/torrus -g torrus torrus
usermod -G www,torrus www
Further installation process is mostly as usual (watch out piddir
setting, as described above):
./configure
make
make install
The default directory layout is described below. Should you need to change it, there is a number of variables and configuration options that you may use as ./configure
arguments. See ./configure --help
for details. Alternatively you can utilize the script ./setup_tools/configure_fhs
, which is designed to provide an FHS compliant setup. The script is equivalent to executing
./configure \
--prefix=/opt \
--mandir=/opt/share/man \
pkghome=/opt/torrus \
sitedir=/etc/opt/torrus
Do not try to change any paths by supplying them as make
variables, this would most probably break the installation. The only make
variable that is supported is DESTDIR
. It may be used for preparing the package for further distribution. For example, the following command would install all Torrus files as if /tmp/stage were the root of the filesystem:
make DESTDIR=/tmp/stage install
The presence of prerequisite Perl modules is checked during the execution of ./configure
. You can disable this by giving --enable-pkgonly option.
The installer sets up the site configuration files, but only if they don't already exist.
Plugin modules should be installed separately, after the Torrus software is successfully installed. For each plugin, unpack the plugin distribution archive to some directory, and execute
torrus install_plugin <UNPACKED_PLUGIN_DIR>
A number of directories is set up by default under the path /var
, and they must be writable by all Torrus processes, including the Apache web server.
You can control these directories' access rights by setting the following environment variables: var_user, var_group, var_mode, like follows:
./configure var_group=wwwrun
Default values for operating systems other than Cygwin are: var_user=torrus, var_group=torrus, var_mode=775. Setgid bit is set by default for these directories.
If available, you may place these directories on a fast media, for example, a robust disk array. Changing the varprefix
variable would be generally enough, for example:
./configure varprefix=/vol1/torrus_var
Attention for the systems that have /var/run in a temporary directory. By default, Torrus installer creates a directory /var/run/torrus to store the daemon PID files. After the server reboot, the temporary filesystems are cleaned up, and the directory would not exist any more. Use piddir=/var/torrus/run or similar in the ./configure arguments.
As of Torrus version 2.02, the collector and monitor daemons send their logs to a local SYSLOG server in "local0" facility by default.
The SYSLOG facility can be altered in torrus-siteconfig.pl:
$Torrus::Log::syslogFacility = 'local5';
Also the following two statements would revert to the old behavior (log files written directly by the daemons). Please not that the daemons would not rotate the logs on SIGHUP:
$Torrus::Collector::useSyslog = 0;
$Torrus::Monitor::useSyslog = 0;
If your system policy does not allow to use the system SYSKLOG daemon, you can run your own (rsyslogd is recommended) and attach it to a UNIX socket. In this case, the following statement in siteconfig would direct all logging to an alternative SYSLOG socket:
$Torrus::Log::syslogSockOpt = ['unix', '/home/jsmith/tmp/syslog.sock'];
/usr/share/
Home directory for Torrus distribution files
/usr/share/torrus/conf_defaults/
torrus-config.pl and other configuration files
/usr/share/torrus/bin/
Command-line executables
@docdir@/
POD and TXT documentation files
/usr/share/doc/torrus-common/examples/
Miscelaneous example files
/usr/share/perl5/
Perl libraries
/usr/share/torrus/plugins/
Plugins configuration
/usr/share/torrus/scripts/
Scripts
/usr/share/torrus/sup/
Supplementary files, DTDs, MIBs, color schemas, web plain files
/usr/share/torrus/templates/
Renderer output templates
/usr/share/torrus/xmlconfig/
Distrubution XML files
/etc/torrus/
Site configurable files
/etc/torrus/conf/
Place for torrus-siteconfig.pl and other siteconfigs
/etc/torrus/conf/discovery/
Devdiscover input files
/etc/torrus/templates/
User-defined Renderer output templates
/etc/torrus/xmlconfig/
User XML configuration files
/usr/share/man
Place for man pages. All articles have the prefix C<torrus_>
/var/log/torrus/
Daemon logfiles
/var/run/torrus
Daemon PID files
/var/cache/torrus
Renderer cache
/var/lib/torrus/db
Berkeley DB home
/var/lib/torrus/session_data/lock
/var/lib/torrus/session_data/store
Web interface session files
/var/lib/torrus/collector_rrd
Recommended directory for RRD files generated by collectors
The datasources are configured with %Torrus::Global::treeConfig
hash in torrus-siteconfig.pl.
In this hash, the keys give the tree names. The values for each tree name are pointers to hashes, with the following keys and values: xmlfiles points to an array of source XML file names; run points to a hash with the names of the daemons that would be automatically launched for the tree; desription gives a short line describing the tree contents.
Two additional arrays: @Torrus::Global::xmlAlwaysIncludeFirst
and @Torrus::Global::xmlAlwaysIncludeLast
give a list of source XML files that are included in every tree, in the beginning or in the end of the XML files list. By default, this array consists of two files: defaults.xml and site-global.xml. The second one is resided in the user-configurable directory, and you can use it to override any default settings.
Example:
@Torrus::Global::xmlAlwaysIncludeFirst =
('defaults.xml', 'site-global.xml');
%Torrus::Global::treeConfig = (
'tree_A' => {
'description' => 'The First Tree',
'xmlfiles' => [qw(a1.xml a2.xml a3.xml)],
'run' => { 'collector' => 1, 'monitor' => 1 } },
'tree_B' => {
'description' => 'The Second Tree',
'xmlfiles' => ['b1.xml', 'b2.xml'],
'run' => {} }
);
XML files are read additively within each tree, in the order as they are listed. The XML compiler searches for the files in several directories, listed in @Torrus::Global::xmlDirs
. By default, this list conssists of two paths, one for Torrus distribution files, and the other for user files.
Files generated by devdiscover
usually contain include statements which add the vendor-specific XML files to the compilation.
Below follows a short description of some XML files that come with Torrus distribution. Only site-global.xml is installed in the directory for user-configurable files, all others are placed in the distribution directory.
defaults.xml
Default parameters for the root of the datasources tree. Default view definitions. Note: this file is automatically overwritten by make install
.
site-global.xml
Parameters that you want to change or define for your site. This file will be compiled for every tree after defaults.xml, and this is the place to override the defaults. The file that is supplied with the Torrus distribution has some useful parameters that you may simply uncomment. Note: this file is never overwritten by make install
.
snmp-defs.xml
SNMP collector defaults. The file defines several templates used for collecting SNMP data. Do not change this file. You may redefine the needed parameters in your site-specific files and templates.
vendor/<vendor>.<product>[.<subsystem>].xml
SNMP collector definitions and templates for various hardware vendors and products. devdiscover
includes some of these files automatically in the configuration.
generic/*.xml
SNMP collector definitions and templates for vendor-independent MIBs. Most files are named after corresponding RFC numbers.
In addition, the distribution package contains several example files.
For more details about XML configuration, see Torrus User Guide and Torrus XML Configuration Guide.
In addition to %Torrus::Global::treeConfig, you may wish to set some other parameters in your site configuration file (torrus-siteconfig.pl).
See torrus-config.pl for the complete list of varaibes that you may override in your site config. Among them, most interesting are:
$Torrus::Renderer::companyName
The text that you specify here will appear in the top left corner of all HTML pages.
$Torrus::Renderer::companyURL
The company name text will be clickable with the URL specified in this variable.
Torrus web interface is designed to run under mod_perl environment (<http://perl.apache.org>).
See the Torrus Web Interface Reference document for detailed instructions on Apache configuration.
By default, Torrus web interface requires user authentication. You can disable this by changing $Torrus::CGI::authorizeUsers
to zero in your torrus-siteconfig.pl.
ACLs are controlled by acledit
utility. See Torrus Manual pages for detailed description. Example:
torrus acledit --addgroup=staff --permit=DisplayTree --for='*'
torrus acledit --addgroup=staff --permit=GlobalSearch --for='*'
torrus acledit --adduser=jsmith --password=mysecretpassword \
--cn="John Smith" --addtogroup=staff
torrus acledit --addgroup=admin \
--permit=DisplayTree --permit=DisplayAdmInfo --for='*'
In order to clean old HTTP session data, it is recommended to run cleanup script in a cron job, once per day:
#min hour mday month wday who command
5 3 * * * root /usr/share/torrus/bin/cleanup
The Torrus distriubution provides a startup script which you can install in the init scripts directory (/etc/init.d on most Unixes or /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ on FreeBSD). The script torrus
is created during the installation process in the subdirectory <init.d> of the distribution directory.
The init script reads some parameters from /usr/share/torrus/conf_defaults/initscript.conf, and /etc/torrus/conf/initscript.siteconf if the latter exists. By default, it makes the monitor daemons sleep for 20 minutes when they are launched simultaneously with collector daemons.
Follow these instructions when upgrading from previous Torrus release.
In the previous distribution directory, look up the config.log file. It contains the configure options that you used in previous installation.
Unpack the new release distribution.
Run ./configure
with the same options you used before.
Stop the collector and monitor processes (usually by /etc/init.d/torrus stop
).
Stop Apache process.
Run make install
.
Start the collector and monitor processes.
Start Apache process.
Also it is recommended to re-compile your XML configuration. If you prefer not to do this, it's recommended that you clear the Web interface cache both in your browser and in Torrus:
torrus clearcache
As of Torrus version 2.01, plugins inherit a new release numbering scheme: a plugin release version is a 3-component number, where the first two numbers are the Torrus release version that is compatible with this plugin.
In a typical Torrus setup, there are two disk space consuming entities: the RRDtool data storage and the Berkeley DB database.
RRDtool data files (or RRD's) are used to store the values that are gathered by the collector daemons. These are the most intensively updated files, so the disk speed is important here. If possible, it is better to spread the RRD files across several physical disks.
Berkeley DB database is used to keep all the configuratiuon data for your datasource trees, and it also keeps some live status information. It's intensively updated during XML compilation only. During normal Torrus working cycle, there are only few updates, not very critical in time. The database is read quite intensively during collector initialization, but usually it's the CPU speed that causes more delay.
For a typical Torrus installation with standard RRD creation parameters, the rough estimation is as follows: the Berkeley DB database occupies from 10 to 13 KB per collector datasource, and the RRD storage takes approximately 80 to 85 KB per datasource.
For a medium-sized system, few hundred megabytes for the Berkeley DB database and several gigabytes for RRD storage would be sufficient. Larger systems require a thorough design and staging work. See Torrus Scalability Guide for more details.
In large installations, the SNMP collector experiences quite intensive input traffic bursts. Thus the UDP socket receive buffers should be adapted to sustain the load. By default, Torrus sets the UDP receiving buffer size, SO_RCVBUF, to 131071 bytes. This should fit most of installations. However, it's useful to check the network statistics if there are any UDP buffer overflows. On most systems, the commands netstat -s -p udp
or netstat -s
should show you these counters. The maximum buffer size is usually limited by a system kernel variable, and can be increased if needed. See $Torrus::Collector::SNMP::RxBuffer
and its comments in torrus-config.pl for more details.
Copyright (c) 2002-2012 Stanislav Sinyagin <ssinyagin@yahoo.com>