Frequently asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Are there other communication channels for the Alerts than Slack and Email?

   Yes, it is possible to define a wide variety of alert notification channels.
   Check out the Grafana documentation for more information.

2. What ports need to be open in the firewall on the system running SPPmon?

   It is required to open the ports 3000 for Grafana and 8086 for Influx. If you only plan to use it on localhost, you may leave either or both closed. Both install script and install instructions guide how to open the ports.

3. Is it possible to use the install script if no firewall is running on the system?

   Yes, that is possible, but we currently do not support flag skip the configuration automatically. To skip the firewall configuration, please refer to the skipping installation steps page

4. The regular occurring failure of the ssh-mpstat command is reported. Is this important, is it required to be installed?

   The mpstat-command has the function to track the cpu data of any ssh-client within a single table - even the non-server ones.
   We have to evaluate if the data is redundant and really required on the server. We are aware that mpstat is removed as default server install from some SPP releases. For now, you can:

   1. Ignore this error. It will still show up in the list of errors, but the "error median" will adjust and not warn you about it in short future.

   2. Add this ssh-command to the skip_cmds-list, defined within the config file. This is added with SPPMon version 1.1. Simply add/adjust this line to the SSH-Client definition of the SPP-server:

      "type"        :  "server",
      "skip_cmds"   :  ["mpstat"]
      

   3. Install mpstat if you want to have the Component CPU panel filled with server data too.

5. The InfluxDB fails to start/connect on a version greater than 1.8.6-1 when using authentication.
   This is a known issue from InfluxDB, which is sadly not fixed yet. Authentication is highly recommended. Communication without using SSL is not recommended.

   Please downgrade your InfluxDB to version 1.8.6-1 to re-enable autostart via systemctl:

   • Install: sudo yum install influxdb-1.8.6-1
   • Downgrade existing install: sudo yum downgrade influxdb-1.8.6-1

   After using yum update, you might need to downgrade it again.

6. The security check of my system revealed:

   • SSL certificate expired:
     SPPMon uses up to two SSL certificates. You can easily renew them with the instruction provided in the Wiki:

     sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 \
     -keyout /etc/ssl/influxdb-selfsigned.key \
     -out /etc/ssl/influxdb-selfsigned.crt \
     -days <NUMBER_OF_DAYS>

     If configured, there are two pairs of certs/key: /etc/ssl/influxdb-selfsigned.* and /etc/ssl/grafana-selfsigned.*

   • TSL 1.0 and 1.1 are activated, and TSL 1.2 is required:
     The InfluxDB on Port 8086 is configured to allow old TSL protocol versions. To change this, please follow the steps:

     1. Open the InfluxDB config file (you can use any editor as you like): sudo nano /etc/influxdb/influxdb.conf
     2. Scroll to the section at the very bottom [tls]
     3. uncomment the line # min-version = by removing the #
     4. Change the line to min-version = "tls1.2"
     5. Save and exit by ctrl + x -> y

   • Unsafe ciphers are used:
     Please see the steps above and also uncomment + change the following lines:

     ciphers = [ ... ]

     For me, it was enough to uncomment this line, though you can check for yourself which ciphers are safe for you to work with.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us