Benny - Biggest Problem ....

[Sam Stave]

Benny,

I am a very technical person - however as one who also
runs operations and has a history of developing
extremely detailed technical programs I feel
comfortable with my assessment of the documentation
being lacking in Nagios - and here is why:

The documentation that I develop, expect and require
is such that it covers all the bases in such a
detailed manner as to provide instantly useful
information to one who is tasked with supporting a
service sight-unseen.

As an example, The technical run book for a large
network should include three levels of documentation,
which when combined together to form the actual
Run-Book allow for full operation of a system by staff
who have no prior experience administering it.

First there is a Technical Overview which describes
the full state of the organization, its services and
the infrastructure supporting these services from a
high level. This is a document that is used to
communicate the overall features and functions to
individuals and groups from a non-technical
perspective. Think of this level of documentation as
what you would use to communicate with executives.
This would describe your system from a 10,000 foot
view.

Then there is the Technical Description. This is a
level of documentation that would detail and describe
your organization and services from an internal
perspective. This would contain network maps,
information on the subnetting and zoning and routing
architecture of your network. You would define your
policies here, list the systems and services that you
maintain and where they are located. This is obviously
not an externally shared document.

Last there is Procedural Documentation. This details
the actual systems, configuration of your systems and
the procedures and methods used in support, deployment
and maintenance of your system. This is very
confidential information as a whole - but any
procedure should be able to be pulled out as a
standalone document walking an administrator through a
particular process i.e. how to perform your backups,
or how to recover a specific file. How to add a host
to your monitoring system etc...

This is information that is strictly for IT - or a
person tasked with doing a particular function of IT
in an emergency (failure or loss of staff)....

The goal that I am bringing up with regards to the
Nagios documentation is that while there is technical
documentation, it is hardly concise and in a clear
flow.

I will be developing my personal Nagios documentation
along the same model mentioned above: "this is how
nagios is architected" "this is where all of its files
live, and how they operate" "this is all the
requirements for a host, service or server" and last
"this is how you add a specific host or service"

Now, there will be a certain level of expectation for
shared nomenclature, such as you know how to login,
ssh, ping etc.... but also there will be the ability
for a person, given minimal coaching to be able to
accomplish base tasks associated with ensuring that
nagios can monitor hosts on a network.

Just because documentation is available out there that
enables IT staff to create a nagios server, does not
mean that the available documentation is complete or
satisfactory.

Thanks

Sam

--- "C. Bensend" <benny at bennyvision.com> wrote:

> 
> > anyway - the point is that it should be fairly
> obvious
> > that some people do find defficiencies in the
> > documentation - as some people need things spelled
> out
> > in a non-technical description more than others,
> and I
> > hope to alleviate that to as much a degree as I
> can -
> > as opposed to making attacks with no value-add on
> the
> > list...
> 
> Hi Sam,
> 
>    I'm curious to know what your background is, ie,
> your technical
> proficiency.  This is absolutely an honest question,
> and I'm not at all
> intending to attack or demean you.  I'm curious -
> are you familiar with
> *NIX and open source, or are you just getting into
> it?
> 
>    The questions and problems you've mentioned seem
> suggest that you're
> not familiar with compiling code, using config
> files, etc.  For example,
> the config files - at the end of the 'make' step of
> installation, it
> very pointedly tells you to 'make install-config' to
> create a set of
> example config files (the DESTDIR and CFGDIR are
> automagically substituted
> with your actual values):
> 
> 
> make install-config
>    - This installs *SAMPLE* config files in
> $(DESTDIR)$(CFGDIR)
>      You'll have to modify these sample files before
> you can
>      use Nagios.  Read the HTML documentation for
> more info
>      on doing this.  Pay particular attention to the
> docs on
>      object configuration files, as they determine
> what/how
>      things get monitored!
> 
> 
>    To me, this seems very clear.  Does it to you? 
> It might not, if
> you're simply not used to software on a *NIX system.
> 
>    This is all for my curiousity.  Nagios is a
> technical system, intended
> for technical people, to do technical things.  I
> think very technically,
> and I don't see many issues with the documents. 
> This might be
> considerably different for others.  And it might
> indeed be difficult for
> someone that isn't used to thinking technically.
> 
> Benny
> 
> 
> -- 
> "Horrible pain!  I made sounds like a dolphin giving
> birth."
>                                                   --
> Mr. Corman, "Scrubs"
> 
> 
>
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