phpSymon

About

As an avid OpenBSD user, I use OpenBSD for virtually everything...including a great deal of mass web/email hosting. I use the symon/symux packages by Willem Dijkstra to monitor system performance, but the graphs produced by syweb don't provide a nice up-to-the-second overview of things (plus I loathe putting a shell in my chroot'ed apache). Sometimes it's nice to have a brief overview of things, and existing projects such as phpSysInfo don't work well on OpenBSD...and that motivated me to write phpsymon.

phpsymon is a simple PHP script that listens on the address and port (default 127.0.0.1 and 2100, respectively) that symon streams its output to. Once the stats are grabbed, it parses the output into an easy-to-read overview of things.

phpsymon is FREE software, distributed under the BSD license.

Download & Installation

phpsymon v2.0 can be downloaded here: phpsymon.tar.gz.

To install, simply unzip in the web-directory you want to view the stats in.

      # cd /var/www/htdocs
      # tar xzf /path/to/download/phpsymon.tar.gz
   

Configuration Options

Options configurable on phpsymon are:

• SymuxAddress. This is the address you want to read symon stats FROM. (Default is "127.0.0.1".)
  NOTE: This host needs to be running symux and have it configured correctly for each host you want to read stats from.
• SymuxPort. This is the port at the address you want to read symon stats from. (Default is "2100".)
• SymonHost. Multiple hosts running symon can stream their stats to a given address/port where symux is running. This is the host you want to display stats for. (Default is "127.0.0.1".)
• Max Tries. If many hosts are streaming their symon stats to the address/port you are connecting to, this option specifies how many datums to read before giving up. So, if n hosts stream their symon stats to the same address/port, this should be n. (Default is 1.)
  WARNING: If the host you are wanting to view only updates its symon stats every m seconds, then you could wait up to m * n seconds! Be careful with this!
• AutoRefresh. How often (in seconds) you want the screen to auto-refresh. 0 = never. (Default is 0.)
• If you monitor df data through symong, you may want to run the build_df_aliases.sh script in the config directory, and store the output into config/df_mounts.php. When df data is displayed, it will then show mount points.
• What about the GUI, is that configurable???
  See the FAQ entry about that.

Screenshot

The following are 2 screenshots of phpsymon. The first is a snapshot from of my firefox window showing only what fits in the window. The second shows the entire phpsymon display.
Click each for full-size version.

Basic Screenshot

Screenshot of Entire Window

Demo

You can view a live example of phpsymon here. This demo may not stay up permanently for the public.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What about the Look-n-Feel, is that configurable?
   
   Yes, it can be done by modifying the CSS style sheet and the HTML within the index.php or template/* files.
   ;)
   
   Editting the templates or even the main layout in index.php is fairly easy.
2. Why does phpsymon sometimes take 5+ seconds to render the stats?
   
   By default, symon only collects system stats every 5 seconds, so (in turn) symux only streams this output every 5 seconds. Thus, if you try to view phpsymon in-between updates, you could wait up to 5 seconds before the stats are available.
3. I can't seem to view any stats, it just errors out. My Apache error_log file reports the following:
   

            [error] PHP Warning:  socket_connect(): unable to connect [61]: Connection refused in /path/to/symon/symon.php on line 43
         

   What gives?
   
   You must also be running symux on the host you are reading stats from. If you have symon streaming stats to a host, call it picard, then picard also needs to be running symux, and the symux config file on picard must be set to accept symon stats from each host. (See the next FAQ for more info on how to setup symon/symon for multiple hosts.)
4. OK, I've tried the above, and it isn't working!
   
   A few people have reported this, but in all cases I'm aware of, it's because of incorrect setup between the clients running symon and the host they stream their stats to.
   Your setup should be like the following. Say we have two hosts, named data and worf, with IP addresses 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.11, respectively. We want to view symon stats from these two hosts, so we install symon on both of them and stream their stats to another host (it could be either data or worf), named picard, with IP address 192.168.1.1. Since picard is receiving the data, it needs symux installed and running.
   Now, in this setup, you would run symon on hosts data and worf with something like the following in their /etc/symon.conf file:

            monitor { cpu(0), mem, pf, mbuf, ...  } stream to 192.168.1.1 2100
         

   And something like the following in /etc/symux.conf on host picard:

            mux 192.168.1.1 2100
            # accept symon stats from host "data"
            source 192.168.1.10 {
               accept { cpu(0),  mem, pf, mbuf, ... }
   
               datadir "/var/www/symon/rrds/data"
            }
   
            # accept symon stats from host "worf"
            source 192.168.1.11 {
               accept { cpu(0), mem, pf, mbuf, ... }
   
               datadir "/var/www/symon/rrds/worf"
            }
         

   Now, in the phpsymon file config/config.php, you should have the following variables set as you see them:

            $config['SymuxAddress'] = "192.168.1.1";
            $config['SymuxPort']    = "2100";
            $config['SymonHost']    = "192.168.1.10";
         

   The first two variables instruct phpsymon to read stats from host picard on the appropriate port. The third variable, tells phpsymon which host to display information from.
   
   If you think your setup is correct, but are still having problems, you can try telnet'ing to the IP/port where all of the clients are streaming their symon stats, from the machine where phpsymon is running. If your setup is correct, you should see something like the following (color added for emphasis):

   ryan@godel# telnet 192.168.1.1 2100
   Trying 192.168.1.1...
   Connected to 192.168.1.1.
   Escape character is '^]'.
   192.168.1.10;io:cd1:1126931708:0:0:0:0:0;io:cd0:1126931708:0:0:0:0:0;io:wd0:11269
   31708:3674918:11894382:0:91278661120:190547191296;proc:httpd:1126931708:21:11222
   :3835:218:119:0.00:162471936:0;if:sis1:1126931708:8991240:10262738:598651475:771
   310954:17067:3:0:0:1663440:0;if:sis0:1126931708:11632076:10175231:4117005601:164
   8118281:50513:1:0:0:0:0;if:lo0:1126931708:1436865:1436865:1033785094:1033785094:
   0:0:0:0:0:0;mbuf::1126931708:297:204:0:0:61:0:32:0:196:250:618496:77:0:0:12;pf::
   1126931708:8191271922:5661534388:0:352:11354245:227308:10172162:18269:0:0:1:4:56
   7:44138834:1403370:1402803:4519156:0:9:0:1:0;mem::1126931708:137121792:209858560
   :180875264:96780288:1073995776;cpu:0:1126931708:0.30:0.00:0.60:0.00:99.10;
   192.168.1.11;io:wd0:1126925734:5163711:127683:0:327717384704:3833036800;proc:mys
   qld:1126925734:1:338126:968281:15584:13219:0.00:77176832:47833088;if:gem0:112692
   5734:1707592:5024602:996008551:1940494606:19361:5:0:0:1279589:0;if:lo0:112692573
   4:1593:1593:327877:327877:0:0:0:0:0:0;mbuf::1126925734:173:128:0:0:38:0:7:0:128:
   208:532480:57:0:0:0;mem::1126925734:56451072:162463744:1020313600:0:314818560;cp
   u:0:1126925734:0.60:0.00:1.40:0.00:98.00;
   ^]
   telnet> 
         

   Each line of output corresponds to symon stats from a host, and the first word of each is line is the IP of the host. So...
   • If you never see stats for the host you want, chances are symux isn't configured to accept stats from that host, or there's a firewall issue between the two hosts in question.
   • If you can't even connect to that IP/port via telnet, then either symux isn't running on that machine, or there is a firewall issue.
   If you can see stats for each host you want, yet phpsymon still isn't showing the hosts email me.
5. Why doesn't phpsymon report system uptime? (by far the most frequently asked question)
   
   Because symon doesn't collect that information.
   Also, there is no easy way for PHP to grab this when Apache is running chroot'ed. If you really want to know your uptime that badly, consider running Apache un-chroot'ed. (Oddly, people have done just that.)