Cleaning up OpenNMS Assets

I've had OpenNMS running on the network for awhile, and here's a problem I ran into: my network is too dynamic. Specifically, it doesn't play nice with DHCP clients. Every time the IP address changes, OpenNMS considers it a new node.

What's screwed up is if you delete the old nodes, the asset info sticks around, even if you didn't add any actual asset information.

I got things straightened up enough that OpenNMS and I are getting along fairly well. There was still all this old asset information gumming up the works. I didn't see anything in the UI or help to get rid of them, so I did it the hard way.

Log into the postgres box hosting the database, and don't forget to use it. Then run the following:

delete from assets 
using node
where node.nodeid = assets.nodeid
and node.nodetype = 'D'

That should clear it up, and it doesn't appear to break anything. If you have any trouble after running this, please let me know in the comments, and I'll look into it (since it will probably be a problem for me, too).

Hope this helps.

OpenNMS and Windows Monitoring

Now that OpenNMS has discovered my network, how can I get even more out of it?

My first thought was to extend OpenNMS to accommodate what I'm looking for. That's a lot like work, so I've installed and enabled SNMP on one of my Windows 2003 servers.

A little searching turned up this set of instructions for configuring SNMP (because MS' instructions are atrocious. A "configuring snmp" section should do more than tell you what configuring it would get you, if they were planning on being so gracious as to tell you how to do it).

It's under the properties for the service. That's a great place for it - no sarcasm intended. Of course, there's only a couple of other services that do that, so I don't look there.

Anyway...

I configured the community name, and set the destination to the FQDN of the OpenNMS server. Restarted the service, and ta-da! OpenNMS started receiving messages. And complaining about them.

Checked the Security tab, and added the OpenNMS server to the list of "Accept SNMP packets from these hosts" list.

There's a section in the OpenNMS admin section for configuring what IP addresses will be sending traps, and what community name they send. I left it at v1.

It started working after that.

I'm not entirely thrilled with this as a solution. It is known to be pretty insecure. Let's see what kind of data comes through...and I'm just not getting the point. There doesn't seem to be anything new. Maybe SNMP is just too smart for me. Ah well.

Update: I did a little configuration with evntwin.exe, and started forwarding various W3SVC events to OpenNMS. That was all around kludgey, and not really worth the effort.

I still like OpenNMS as a lightweight inventory and monitoring system, though.

OpenNMS as a Windows Service

[I've updated this some, to correct errors and be more thorough]

I'm doing some testing with OpenNMS, to see if it is at least good enough. So far, it is.

One of the complications is that it is a java app. This would be fine, except it doesn't ship with a means of running it as a Windows service. All in all, it wasn't too bad. I got it running on Windows 2003 Server - I haven't tried 2008, yet.

All of this assumes that you have OpenNMS itself working.

I started with the instructions here, using "Method One".

The abbreviated version of those instructions is that inside the downloaded .zip file, there's a file structure which looks like the one in your OpenNMS directory.

Unzip that to someplace other than your OpenNMS directory - I know how you people are - so we can make some changes.

Delete the ./src directory. If you're reading this, you aren't using that.

In the ./bin directory, there's a bunch of batch files. I renamed them "WrapperInstall.bat", "WrapperStart.bat", etc., because that's just easier to keep track of.

In ./conf, there's a file named wrapper.conf. Try using this one, but double-check the directory names....

#********************************************************************
# Wrapper License Properties (Ignored by Community Edition)
#********************************************************************
# Include file problems can be debugged by removing the first '#'
#  from the following line:
##include.debug
#include ../conf/wrapper-license.conf
#include ../conf/wrapper-license-%WRAPPER_HOST_NAME%.conf

#********************************************************************
# Wrapper Java Properties
#********************************************************************
wrapper.java.command=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_14\bin\java
wrapper.java.additional.1=-Xmx256m
wrapper.java.additional.2=-Dopennms.home="C:/PROGRA~1/OpenNMS"

wrapper.java.mainclass=org.tanukisoftware.wrapper.WrapperSimpleApp
wrapper.app.parameter.1= org.opennms.bootstrap.Bootstrap
wrapper.app.parameter.2= start

wrapper.java.classpath.1=C:/Program Files/Java/jdk1.6.0_14/lib/tools.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.2=../lib/wrapper.jar
wrapper.java.classpath.3=../lib/opennms_bootstrap.jar

wrapper.java.library.path.1=../lib

wrapper.java.additional.auto_bits=TRUE

#********************************************************************
# Wrapper Logging Properties
#********************************************************************

wrapper.console.format=PM
wrapper.console.loglevel=WARN
wrapper.logfile=../logs/wrapper.log
wrapper.logfile.format=LPTM
wrapper.logfile.loglevel=INFO

wrapper.logfile.maxsize=0
wrapper.logfile.maxfiles=0

wrapper.syslog.loglevel=NONE

#********************************************************************
# Wrapper Windows Properties
#********************************************************************

wrapper.console.title=OpenNMS

#********************************************************************
# Wrapper Windows NT/2000/XP Service Properties
#********************************************************************

wrapper.ntservice.name=opennms

wrapper.ntservice.displayname=OpenNMS
wrapper.ntservice.description=Network Management System

wrapper.ntservice.starttype=AUTO_START
wrapper.ntservice.interactive=false

Copy all of the wrapper files into their corresponding OpenNMS directories. If the destination directory doesn't exist (./conf), create it.

Almost there...

Go into the ./bin directory of your OpenNMS installation, and double-click the WrapperInstall.bat file.

Now, you should be able to click on WrapperStart.bat (you did rename it, right?), or go into the Services MMC and start it from there.