May 2008 - noctool-devel@common-lisp.net - mailman3.common-lisp.net

[noctool-devel] compact configurations for identical machines
by Jim Prewett 05 Jun '08

05 Jun '08

Hello, I was thinking about what a bear it will be to have to specify each of my compute node systems in my clusters individually. I was thinking about syntax such as the following that would create an equipment object for each of 256 hosts named l001 through l256. (machine-cluster "LosLobos" linux-host (user "download") (disks (disk "/dev/sda1" 80 95)) (machinerange "l001-l256")) What do y'all think? Is there a better way to do this? Something like this would reduce the size of my shop's config file a couple orders of magnitude - in turn, I'd screw things up accordingly less often :) Jim James E. Prewett Jim(a)Prewett.org download(a)hpc.unm.edu Systems Team Leader LoGS: http://www.hpc.unm.edu/~download/LoGS/ Designated Security Officer OpenPGP key: pub 1024D/31816D93 HPC Systems Engineer III UNM HPC 505.277.8210

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[noctool-devel] "How would you like to have your ad on 2 Million Websites ?"
by BlogBlaster＠common-lisp.net 25 May '08

25 May '08

How would you like 2 Million Sites linking to your ad ? Weblog or blog population is exploding around the world, resembling the growth of e-mail users in the 1990s. Post your ads where people read them! - What if you could place your ad on all these sites ? Right, that would mean you would have millions of sites linking to your ad. For Full details please read the attached .html file Unsubscribe please read the attached .html file

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[noctool-devel] SNMP support?
by Ingvar 19 May '08

19 May '08

Icky as it is, I fear we'll be needing to tackle the horribleness that is "SNMP support", sooner or later. Makes it super-icky supporting routers and switches, otherwise (yes, to an extent, you can extract SOME diagnostic data via command lines, on quite a few different routers and switches, it's just not necessarily trivial). This is, FWIW, where things ground to a halt last year (SNMP support and my not having multiple boxes, so I could actually trial the network protocol in a sensible way). This is what I want/need from a suitable SNMP package: + ASDF-INSTALLable (I don't think we can compromise here) + Ideally written completely in Lisp (that is just a preference, not something that is needed, if the best option uses FFI, the best option uses FFI) + The results from queries are lisp-friendly (so we can process them in an assortment of ways) + Introspectable MIB trees (nice, though maybe not necessary) So, the options that I can find: + Lisp-SNMP Pros: Listed on CLiki Cons: not ASDF-INSTALLable (doesn't, in fact, even have an ASDF system definition) + cl-net-snmp Pros: hosted on common-lisp.net Cons: not ASDF-INSTALLable; depends on at least one package that is hard to find (as in "didn't work when I tried) That's about it, as far as I can see. Anyone know any other SNMP implementation? //Ingvar

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[noctool-devel] Monitor-configuration question
by Ingvar 18 May '08

18 May '08

So, there's this sexp-based configuration language. And I was wondering, if we have a monitor that has lots of assorted defaults, but it's good to have those tunable, should we use keyword-like syntax? At the moment, I think the following would be good for tuning ping monitoring: (machine "blah" :linux-host (ping :max-rtt 500 :max-fail 17 :ping-count 42 :interval 3600)) That instantiates a ping monitor that should re-schedule every hour, do 42 pings, consider 17 failed to be enough for a red alert and has an RTT threshold of 500 ms. Defaults, at the moment, are "1 failed", "20 ms RTT", "60s interval" and "5 pings". Disk monitors, however, use a blend of required and optional arguments, but it makes sense there, because without specifying anything at all, there will be a set of default disk monitors and the main reason you'd want to configure anything is to change the "percentage used space" threshold. But, then, this makes the configuration language somewhat irregular. Though I personally prefer "makes sense" config language to "super-regular". Thoughts, anyone? We're not at a point where we have to commit 100% to the config language, but it'd be good to have something more-or-less nailed down the day we build the first release. //Ingvar

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