Monitoring Server Temperature with Opsview

Monitoring Linux and Unix Server
Temperatures with Opsview

Wednesday, 21 November 2012 2

About
• This ‘how to’ presentation describes how to set up server temperature
monitoring for Linux and Unix servers
• To obtain a copy of Opsview visit our website and download Opsview Core
(free) or Opsview Pro (30 day trial).

3
Wednesday, 21 November 2012

Background
• Managing power consumption in a Datacenter is a key factor in helping
keep overall business energy costs down and ensuring servers are
running at optimum performance. Overheating can lead to increased
costs for cooling and also runs the risk of servers crashing.

• Opsview can be used to monitor server temperature and also the
temperature of individual components within a server (Memory, CPU
and Hard drives). Thresholds and alerts can be set for when critical
temperatures are exceeded, helping to keep hot‐running servers in
check.

• This blog post details how to configure Opsview to monitor the
temperature of Linux and Unix servers.

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Configuration
• [NB: This guide assumes the system we wish to monitor already has the
Opsview agent installed]

• As root, we will need to install “lm_sensors” and “hddtemp” (names may
differ by Linux distributions); on CentOS/RHEL they are acquired via
“yum install lm_sensors hddtemp”.

• Once these items are installed, we will need to run “sensors‐detect” as
root to detect the items we’d like to monitor the temperature of. Once
completed, we will need to save this (simply hit ENTER) and the sensors‐
detect is complete.

• Now lm_sensors and hddtemp are installed, we can test them locally as
following:

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Configuration
HDD Temp:
[root@rhelserver ~]# hddtemp /dev/sda
/dev/sda: ST3120811AS: 31°C

lm_sensors:
[root@rhelserver ~]# sensors
coretemp‐isa‐0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Core 0: +38.0°C (high = +84.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

i5k_amb‐isa‐0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Ch. 0 DIMM 0: +67.0°C (low = +110.5°C, high = +124.0°C)
Ch. 1 DIMM 0: +62.0°C (low = +110.5°C, high = +124.0°C)

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Configuration
• We can see as per the output above, that our sensors and their
temperature readings are detected and functioning as desired, now we
need to add plugins to take this output on a “per sensor” basis so we can
add it to a service check for monitoring server temperature.

• Download the “check_lm_sensors” plugin from the link here and copy it
to /usr/local/nagios/libexec. Once done, extract it via “tar ‐zxvf
check_lm_sensors‐3.1.1.tar.gz”.

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Configuration
• We can test our new plugin as root by running:
“/usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐3.1.1/check_lm_sensors –
list” which should again list the sensors and their temperatures. If this
doesn’t work or gives Perl errors, then edit the check_lm_sensors file
using nano/vim, and at the top of the script add the following:

use lib "/usr/local/nagios/perl/lib/";

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Configuration
• To allow us to be able to run this command as the “nagios” user
(required for check_nrpe service checks), we need to:

chmod +x /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors

chown –R nagios:nagios /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/

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Configuration
• We also need to add a line to the “/etc/sudoers” file. As the root user,
append the following line to the bottom of /etc/sudoers:

nagios ALL=(root) NOPASSWD:/usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors

• This allows the nagios user to run check_lm_sensors as root without
having to authentication via password.

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Configuration
• We now have to add our check commands to our agent, as we will be
executing them locally on the server, and passing the output back to our
Opsview server via the check_nrpe command (NRPE being Nagios
Remote Plugin Executor). To do this, we need to outline what our
commands are, and what we will refer to them as. To do this, we need to
edit the “overrides.cfg” file, located at
/usr/local/nagios/etc/nrpe_local/override.cfg.

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Configuration
• We need to edit this file using a text editor such as vim or nano, i.e. “nano
/usr/local/nagios/etc/nrpe_local/override.cfg”, and add lines similar to below:

check_command[core0_temp]=sudo /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors ‐‐sanitize ‐‐high Core0=45,55
check_command[dimm0_temp]=sudo /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors ‐‐sanitize ‐‐high Ch.0DIMM0=60,75
check_command[dimm1_temp]=sudo /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors ‐‐sanitize ‐‐high Ch.1DIMM0=60,75
check_command[sda_temp]=sudo /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_lm_sensors‐
3.1.1/check_lm_sensors ‐‐sanitize ‐‐high sdaTemp=60,75

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About Opsview
Opsview delivers a single unified view of the health of all your
distributed physical, virtual and hybrid cloud systems.

We give DevOps staff all the tools they need to get their jobs done
faster, easier and for less.

• Opsview Enterprise offers large enterprises (+100 devices) and MSPs a certified,
professionally supported system with enhanced functionality such as dynamic
dashboards and reports

• SMEs looking for feature‐rich dashboards to monitor the performance of their on‐
premise, virtualized or cloud apps choose Opsview Pro

• Opsview Core is our free, open source monitoring tool ‐ you can test and customize it
how you want

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Monitoring Server Temperature with Opsview

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