Subj : Re: Network Monitoring
To   : Wilfred van Velzen
From : Brian Rogers
Date : Thu May 27 2021 09:26 am

Hello Wilfred et al;

-=> Wilfred van Velzen wrote to Brian Rogers <=-

 WvV> That needs cooperation of the sysop to install and open up the SNMP
 WvV> "daemon" to the outside. If they do that they should be aware of the
 WvV> security risks...

Many won't understand them however... so it's simply best to avoid such.
It's also for those on RPis to add more overhead to devices with limited
resources.

 WvV> If you just check your links by "pinging" if their binkp poort is
 WvV> connectable, there is no security risk.

Correct, however ... see below.


 WvV>>> What's the difference between looking at what's in your outbound,
 WvV>>> and notice there are files for a system that have not been send
 WvV>>> because your mailer failed to connect to it; or doing a periodic
 WvV>>> ping to that system to find out if it's still online?

 BR> On linux, a very simple shell script can be used. I would guess in
 BR> powershell a parallel could be done too... I don't use Windows so I
 BR> wouldn't know. Just search the contents of your outbound directory for
 BR> files and if they exist then sites are down. Not rocket science :)

 WvV> I wasn't asking how to do it, I was asking what the difference was
 WvV> between the two methods. In my opinion both methods can give you the
 WvV> same information, so you don't need to do a separate ping to know if a
 WvV> system is online or not.

I did show what the difference was. One method could easily be done via a 
script. The other would intail more indepth coding.

 WvV> Again: You don't need to ping, just look at what's in your outbound...
 WvV> ;)

Wrong my friend. A point who doesn't desire to have crash mail that may poll
once a week would show mail stuck in the outbound and read a very false
positive.

Now my question is: for what purpose would such a thing serve? Entertainment
value?? That's all I can really see this for. If the goal is to see if a node
or point left an FTN that's one thing and monitoring one's outbound should be
more than sufficient, and in reality such a tool should be included in the
FTN mailers to auto mail the sysop "mail for #:###/### has been in your queue
for 30 or more days." Again in the interim this could probably be handled
by a shell script that can be cronned that mails the sysadmim/sysop. Other
than that I don't see where someone in 3:###/### for example would need or
want to see my boring stats.

.... XMAS  PARANOID:::::Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me
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 * Origin: SBBS - Carnage! (1:142/103)

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