root/eddie/trunk/doc/QUICKSTART.txt

The EDDIE-Tool Quick Start Guide
2001-06-18 Chris Miles <chris@psychofx.com>

For the impatient, here is a quickstart guide to getting EDDIE up & running.
Note that the 'Quickstart' method will only get you a running monitoring system
but will not get you a monitoring system customized to your environment - that
is up to you, and usually takes a reasonable amount of effort working out what
you want to monitor before you can monitor it.

If you are installing on Windows, also read README.win32.txt


1. Unpack EDDIE somewhere like /opt or /usr/local, eg:
       $ cd /opt
       $ gtar xvzf /tmp/eddie.tgz
   will create the eddie directory with all subdirectories like bin, lib, doc.

2. Point EDDIE to your Python installation.
   [EDDIE requires Python 2.2.1+, and has been tested with most Python versions
   between 2.2.1 and 2.4.  Python 2.3+ is recommended.]
   [EDDIE on Win32 requires Python 2.3 or newer.]
   So edit the first line of eddie/bin/eddie.py to point to your python.
   Eg:
       $ which python
       /usr/bin/python
       $ vi /opt/eddie/bin/eddie.py
       #!/usr/bin/python
   ..etc..

3. Create a configuration file in eddie/config/ called eddie.cf
   The easiest way to do this is to copy eddie/config.sample/eddie.cf
   and modify it to suit your needs.
   Eg:
       $ cd /opt/eddie
       $ mkdir config
       $ cp config.sample/eddie.cf config/eddie.cf
       $ vi config/eddie.cf
   the documentation in eddie.cf should explain enough to get you started.

4. At the bottom of eddie.cf remove all INCLUDE lines and add a line like:
       INCLUDE 'test.rules'

5. Now create a file called test.rules in the same directory as eddie.cf
   Eg:
       $ cd /opt/eddie
       $ vi config/test.rules

6. Add the following lines, as they appear below between the '###'s:

######################################################
PROC initcheck:
    name='init'
    rule='not exists'
    action=email("root", "%(name)s on %(h)s is not running")

FS rootfs:
    fs='/'
    rule='pctused >= 90'
    action=email("root", "%(mountpt)s is at %(pctused)s%% on %(h)s")
######################################################

   These are two basic EDDIE directives.  The first is a process check which
   will alert if the init process is not running.  'name' defines the
   process name, 'rule' defines the check to make (in this case the check
   evaluates true if the process name does not exist in the process list)
   and 'action' defines what to do if the rule evaluates to true.

   The second directive is a filesystem check which checks if the root
   filesystem is 90% or more full.  'fs' defines the filesystem to check,
   'rule' defines the rule to evaluate, in this case it is a simple test
   which will be executed in a Python environment;  'pctused' will contain the
   current percentage full of the filesystem in question, and so the rule
   will be true if 'pctused' is >= 90%.  The 'action', again, defines what
   action to take if the rule is true.

7. Start EDDIE running by starting bin/eddie.py
   Eg:
       $ /opt/eddie/bin/eddie.py
   You can watch the log file, at the location you defined in eddie.cf.
   In this case, if init is running and / is less than 90% full, root
   will get no alert emails.  You can force this by changing the PROC
   name to some non-existence process name (say 'foo') and lowering the
   threshold of the FS rule, like 'pctused >= 1'.  If you get emails from
   these tests then the basic EDDIE functionality is working.

8. Customize the EDDIE configuration by examining the files in config.sample
   and reading the User's Manual.


-- 
$Id$