openSSI webView installation guide

openSSI webView aims to be a simple and easy-to-use monitoring solution for openSSI clusters. It allows the cluster administrator to keep an eye on the cluster health, to quick view each node state and load, and to watch and even migrate users processes all accross the cluster.

requirements

  • specific needs:
  • general needs:
    • a web server to serve pages (Apache rocks!)
    • an openSSI cluster, obviously :)
    • a cron daemon, to schedule data gathering (everybody got this)
    • a web browser (duh, you kiddin'!)

  • optionally:
    • php-rrdtool (PHP RRDtool bindings, may improve performance in graph creation)
    • sudo, to enable processes migration

installation steps

  1. Extract the distribution tarball, either directly in your webserver document root, or in the directory of your choice: 
    $ cd <DESTDIR>
    $ tar xfvj openssi-webview-0.1.tar.bz2
  2. Set the appropriate permissions on the graphs directory, for graph generation and data gathering and on the config.php file, to be able to modify and save settings from the web interface. 
    $ cd <DESTDIR>/openssi-webview
    $ chown -R <USER> graphs
    $ chown <USER> config.php
    Enter a valid username for <USER>, this user will also be used in the next step for data gathering. Usually, choosing apache user as <USER> (named www-data on Debian) is fine.
  3. Depending to your cron daemon, add a line to your /etc/crontab file, or create a new file in /etc/cron.d/ with the following contents: 
    */5 * * * * <USER> [ -d <DESTDIR> ] && (cd <DESTDIR> && ./graphs/update_all.sh )
    Replace <USER> with the valid user specified in the previous step. Replace <DESTDIR> with your full openSSI webView path.
  4. Optionally
    If you want to enable process migration from openSSI webView interface, you should install sudo, and add the following line to your sudoers file: 
    <USER> ALL = NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/migrate
    Replace <USER> with the valid user specified in the previous step, and be careful to exactly respect this syntax, as openSSI webView scripts rely on it.
  5. Configure your webserver to display the contents of your installation directory. Eg., for Apache: 
    Alias /openssi-webview /usr/share/openssi-webview
  6. Optionally
    You can (and are strongly encouraged to) password or IP protect your openSSI webView web directory, in order to prevent access from unauthorized clients. We'd especially recommend to restrict access to processes.php and to settings.php, from where you can migrate users processes. For this, follow instructions given in your webserver manual pages.
  7. Point your web browser to:
    http://<YOURSERVER>/openssi-webview
    and enjoy!