RE: {bb} BB and VMware ESX

I just had to document the bb install on our ESX server, so I thought I would share it with the list.

BigBrother

Create a bbclient user with uid and gid XXX

· groupadd -g XXX bbclient

· useradd -u XXX -g XXX bbclient

Download the bb software onto the ESX server.

· su – bbclient

· export http_proxy='http://web-proxy:8880'

· lynx http://bb4.org/dnld/bb-1.9e.tar.gz

As the bbclient user. follow the installation instruction for the client (not the server portion on BigBrother).

· tar zxvf bb-1.9e.tar.gz BBCLT-bbc1.9e-btf.tar

· tar xvf BBCLT-bbc1.9e-btf.tar

· ln -s bbc1.9e-btf bb

· cd bb/install

· ./bbconfig

o pick linux for the OS

o pick bbclient as the userid

o Y for FQDN

o N for emailing config issues

· chown -R bbclient /home/bbclient/bb

· cd /home/bbclient/bb/src

· make

· make install

· cd ./etc

· Make bb-hosts look like this

10.0.0.01 some-bb-host # BBPAGER BBNET BBDISPLAY

[this servers ip] [this servers hostname]

· ~/bb/runbb.sh start

· tail ~/bb/BBOUT (there should be no errors in the log)

Now get with the BigBrother server admin to add the new client into the server config appropriately.

Note that we explicitly are not adding a boot script for the bbclient. This will cause lots of alerts to go off if an ESX server is rebooted, forcing an admin to investigate.

BigBrother extensions

First we need to make /var/log/messages readable by the bbclient user.

· chmod 640 /var/log/messages

· chown root:bbclient /var/log/messages

Now add these lines below the kill line in /etc/logrotate.d/syslog

/bin/chmod 640 /var/log/messages

/bin/chgrp bbclient /var/log/messages

Second, we need to make so that the vmfs filesystems are seen by the BigBrother client.

Note that for some reason bbgen/laard does not graph the vmfs file systems (we need to fix this).

· cp /usr/sbin/vdf /usr/sbin/vdf.for_bbclient

· In order to allow the large disk volumes size to be printed correctly edit line 73 in /usr/sbin/vdf.for_bbclient and change it from this
printf "%-15s%15.0f%10.0f%10.0f %3d%% /vmfs/%s\n",
to this
printf "%-15s%18.0f%13.0f%13.0f %3d%% /vmfs/%s\n",

· visudo and add these two lines
Cmnd_Alias BBCMDS=/usr/sbin/vdf.for_bbclient
bbclient ALL= NOPASSWD: BBCMDS

· Edit ~bbclient/bb/etc/bbsys.local and change
DF="/bin/df -k"
to
DF="sudo /usr/sbin/vdf.for_bbclient | egrep '(^/dev|^vmhba)'"
Also add this line
DFUSE=""

· Edit ~bbclient/bb/etc/bbdef-client.sh and change DFPANIC to 98

Next we need to add a BigBrother extension to keep an eye on ntp.

· su – bbclient

· export http_proxy='http://web-proxy.8880'

· lynx http://www.deadcat.net/download.php?fileid=445&filename=server-time-ntp.tar&location=1

· tar xvf server-time-ntp.tar ./ntp/bb-ntp.sh

· mv ntp/bb-ntp.sh ~/bb/ext/ bb-ntp.sh

· rmdir ntp

· edit ~/bb/ext/ bb-ntp.sh and change NTPQ4 to “/usr/sbin/ntpq” and NTPD4 to “/usr/sbin/ntpd”

· make ~bbclient/bb/etc/bb-bbexttab look like this
localhost: : bb-ntp.sh;1200

Lastly, restart the bbclient by running these commands as the bbclient user

· ~/bb/runbb.sh stop

· ~/bb/runbb.sh start