tivolilfa

Table of Contents

1. Description
2. Setup - The basics of getting started with tivolilfa
   • What tivolilfa affects
   • Setup requirements
   • Beginning with tivolilfa
3. Usage - Configuration options and additional functionality
4. Reference - An under-the-hood peek at what the module is doing and how
5. Limitations - OS compatibility, etc.
6. Development - Guide for contributing to the module

Description

Puppet module to install IBM Tivoli Log File Agent (ITM) 6.3.0 Fix Pack 1 Agent on RHEL 6,7 and CentOS 6,7. The Tivoli Log File agent provides data to the IBM Tivoli Monitoring Server (TEMS)

The Log File agent provides a configurable log file monitoring capability that uses regular expressions. These strings allow the agent to filter the log data according to patterns in the format file, and submit only the interesting data to an event consumer.

The puppet module installation requires the presence of the 6.3.0-TIV-ITM_LFA-FP0001.tar to be accessible from a NFS mount configurable in the puppet function data provider as per user environment.

The Tivoli Enterprise Monitoring server address (FQDN or IP Address) must be configured as the $tems_server in the puppet function data provider as per the users environment.

The format and configuration files are templated in puppet and can be customised as per users environment

• Format File => itm6_lfa_base.fmt.erb
• Config File => itm6_lfa_base.conf.erb

Setup

What tivolilfa affects

The following pre-requisite packages will be installed.

• ksh.x86_64 : The Original ATT Korn Shell
• libstdc++.x86_64 : GNU Standard C++ Library
• libstdc++.i686 : GNU Standard C++ Library
• libgcc.i686 : GCC version 4.8 shared support library
• nfs-utils.x86_64 : NFS utilities and supporting clients and daemons for the kernel NFS server
• compat-libstdc++-33 : Compatibility standard C++ libraries
• compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-72.el7.i686: Compatibility standard C++ libraries

Once all pre-reqs are in place, the module attempts to mount the NFS filesystem to a mount point configured in the puppet function data provider. Once mounted, it will untar the image and perform a silent installation and configuration of the agent using templated puppet silent install and config files. The configuration of the agent is based on one install. The instance name is defined in the puppet function data provider as $lfa_instance. Log Sources are also defined in the puppet function data provider under $log_sources and set using ruby expression in the templates for the config file.

• silent install file => silent_install.conf.erb
• silent configuration file => silent_config.conf.erb

Once installed successfully, it will start the agent up (kloagent)

• /opt/IBM/ITM/bin/itmcmd agent -o BASE start lo

and unmount the NFS filesystem.

Setup Requirements

For the module to install successfully, Security-Enhanced Linux control must be disabled in the /etc/selinux/config file

SELINUX=disabled

The firewall may require adjustment on the node. See ITM Port Usage in Reference Section

Beginning with tivolilfa

Usage

To apply this module, assign a node the class 'tivolilfa' in the PE console, then initiate a Puppet agent run with 'puppet agent -t' run from the node.

The following paramaters must be defined in the params class as per users environment

• tems_server => Hostname or IP address of TEMS.
• source_dir => Directory to mount NFS share
• lfa_instance => Name of Log file agent instance
• mount_point => NFS mount address
• log_sources => Log sources to monitor

Reference

Classes

• ::tivolilfa
• ::tivolilfa::files
• ::tivolilfa::install
• ::tivolilfa::config

Functions

• ::tivolilfa::data

ITM Port Usage - Agents In a default configuration, agents use the following sockets,

1. Connection to a TEMS port 1918. The communications string defines the protocols used. The CT_CMSLIST environment variable names the servers where a TEMS is running. The initial connection at port 1918 gives access to the Location Broker data and thus indirectly to the TEMS. However from the standpoint of configuration, this is a socket to a 1918 listening port on the server running the TEMS.
2. Agent listening port at 1918+N*4096. If there is just one agent installed, the listening port will be 1918+4096 or 6014. If there are more than one agent installed, the agents contend for the listening ports. That means incidentally that there are a maximum of 15 agents using the default configuration. The listening port is used for several purposes including retrieval of real time data and receiving broadcasts about new WPA address.
3. Ephemeral ports. ITM makes use of ports which are received from TCP/IP as "the next free port". These are used to communicate between ITM sub-systems.
4. Local ports. These are on address 0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1 which are not internet capable addresses. They are used to maintain awareness between ITM processes such as handling the internal web server switch process.

Limitations

This is where you list OS compatibility, version compatibility, etc. If there are Known Issues, you might want to include them under their own heading here.

Development

Since your module is awesome, other users will want to play with it. Let them know what the ground rules for contributing are.

Release Notes/Contributors/Etc. Optional

If you aren't using changelog, put your release notes here (though you should consider using changelog). You can also add any additional sections you feel are necessary or important to include here. Please use the ## header.

Release 0.1.5

Summary

A Puppet 4 (based on 4.5) compatability release with new features. Includes class break down for configuration and new puppet 4 function data provider replacing params.pp. Clean ups of code.

Features

• Addition of config class
• Replaced exec unmount with Mount resource type
• Replaced params class with puppet function data provider for defaults
• Parameter update with data types
• Removed deprecated "tests" directory