Torrus Installation Instructions

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.

Required Software

Recommended Software

Installation Procedure

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:

  ./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

Torrus directory layout

  /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

Note: RRFW used the path /var/snmpcollector as the default path for storing the RRD files. According to FHS specification, the recommended path for service data files is recommended to be a subdirectory of /srv. The path /var/lib/torrus/collector_rrd is used as default by torrus genddx utility, and you can always change it in the command line or in your DDX files.

Configuring Torrus

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.

In addition, the distribution package contains several example files.

For more details about XML configuration, see Torrus User Guide and Torrus XML Configuration Guide.

Site configuration options

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:

Apache HTTP server configuration

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.

In short, typical Apache configuration for mod_perl version 1.0 would look like follows:

  Alias /torrus/plain "/usr/share/torrus/sup/webplain"
  PerlRequire "/usr/share/torrus/conf_defaults/webmux.pl"
  <Location /torrus>
    SetHandler perl-script
    PerlHandler Torrus::ApacheHandler
  </Location>
  <Location /torrus/plain/>
    SetHandler default-handler
    Options None
  </Location>

Access Control Lists

By default, Torrus web interface requires user authentication. You can disable this by changing $Torrus::ApacheHandler::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 --adduser=jsmith --password=mysecretpassword \
    --cn="John Smith" --addtogroup=staff
  torrus acledit --addgroup=admin \
    --permit=DisplayTree --permit=DisplayAdmInfo --for='*'

Cron Job

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

Startup script

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.

Upgrade Procedure

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

Planning the disk space

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.

Network performance tuning

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.

Author

Copyright (c) 2002-2005 Stanislav Sinyagin <ssinyagin@yahoo.com>