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From: jude@nas.nasa.gov (Jude George)
Message-ID: <199407300025.RAA26337@wk106.nas.nasa.gov>
Subject: Free software to display/manage networks. Port to FreeBSD?
Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 17:25:28 -0700
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Would someone like to port this to FreeBSD?
A free package called HNMS, the NAS Hierarchical Network Management
System, is now available. The software may be ftp'd from ftp.netcom.com
in the directory pub/heyjude. (We're looking for other sites
to pick this up, as netcom is pretty bogged down -- offers are welcome).
For sample screen snapshots, try the following in your favorite
WWW viewer:
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/heyjude/SCREEN1.gif
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/heyjude/SCREEN2.gif
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
HNMS v2.0g2
This is the first public release of HNMS, the NAS Hierarchical
Network Management System. HNMS may be used to monitor status
and generate traffic statistics for a large, routed IP network.
Graphical displays are provided for the X11 Window System and
make use of the Motif widget set. HNMS is unique is that it
can be used to graphically display routing information. The
GUI provides compact representations of LANs, in which the status
of every subnet, host, and IP address can be displayed in a small
area. Netmask misconfigurations can be picked out immediately.
It also correctly displays various WAN architectures, such as
those which include multiple IP addresses per interface
(or vice versa), or subnets which spread across multiple links.
A custom version of HNMS was used to generate the live,
three-dimensional representation of the cross-country ATM network
at Supercomputing '93 in Portland, Oregon.
Data collection is handled via SNMP, ICMP, and direct layer 2
monitoring. Distribution of network management information is
done via HNMP, a new protocol which builds upon the simple,
stateless client-server model used by SNMP. HNMP defines
network objects, binds SNMP variables to them, and facilitates
higher level management operations on them. The ASN.1
specification of HNMP is included in this package.
Please note that there is also a release of HNMS that we are
distributing through COSMIC, NASA's software technology
transfer organization. COSMIC may (or may not) provide
support for that distribution, but please do not ask them
for any kind of support concerning this one. They will not
be able to help you. This version of HNMS has been made
available to you, by special dispensation, as FREE SOFTWARE
under the GNU public licence ("copyleft"). It is distributed
as is, with NO WARRANTY for its fitness for any purpose.
If it is redistributed, you may not charge for it or any
derivative work. Please see the file "COPYING" for details
about all this.
Full source code is provided. We encourage the Internet
community to experiment with, build upon, use, port, learn from,
add modules to, write scripts for, and expand this software
package. There are some areas in which it can be improved,
especially in the areas of generality and efficiency.
We would like to see standardized displays for various types
of networks and monitored objects, as well as customized displays
for specific network hardware, and have them be freely available
to everyone.
The authors do not have the resources to maintain this software
outside of NAS. Although we may continue to add enhancements,
we are hoping that other(s) will take on the role of incorporating
bug fixes and extensions to the code, and sending out new releases.
We do welcome any suggestions or bug reports that you may
have -- but there's no guarantee that we will be able to
help you, or even have time to respond. We are working full
time (and then some) on other projects. To reach us via
email, mail to hnmsdev@nas.nasa.gov.
This software has not been extensively tested. Neither the authors,
nor NASA, nor anybody at all takes any responsibility for any damage
that HNMS may cause, directly or indirectly, to your network, your
users, or anything.
That said, it works pretty well for us.
Jude George Leslie Schlecht
jude@nas.nasa.gov schlecht@nas.nasa.gov
Any opinions expressed above are a figment of your imagination,
and should not be taken to reflect the views of NAS, NASA, CSC,
or anybody else.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO BUILD, follow the instructions in the top-level Makefile.
------> Be forewarned that you will need to obtain the Motif libraries,
------> ISODE-7.0 (not 8.0) and tcpdump if they do not already exist
on your system.
FOR COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS on installing and using HNMS,
please read the file docs.ps.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here are some quick-start instructions for the HNMS daemon, the graphical
user interface, and the textual user interface. The binaries are called
hnmsd, hnms, and hnmstool.
INSTALLATION
1. Untar and build the HNMS distribution. Sources, docs, and auxiliary
files are included. This version of HNMS has only been tested on
the Silicon Graphics Iris under IRIX 4.0.5. It should work with little
modification on SparcStations running SunOS 4.x.
1. Choose a directory to be the hnms "home", and copy the binaries
and the background/ directory to that directory.
2. Set the $HNMS_HOME environment variable to be that directory. You
may want to put this in your .login.
3. Make sure tcpdump is in your path. It's usually located in
/usr/local/etc. The HNMS IO module uses tcpdump to discover new
IP addresses.
4. Make the hnmsd (and tcpdump, if necessary) setuid root. The HNMS
IO module, contained within hnmsd, needs root to access the ICMP
socket.
5. Set the HNMS_PROMISCUOUS environment variable. We are just using
this as a flag to tell the IO module that it's okay use promiscuous
Ethernet monitoring.
6. Start hnmsd.
RUNTIME -- GUI
The GUI binary is called "hnms". If you are running it on a machine
different from the server, set the HNMS_SERVER environment variable
to have the server machine's name.
Start the hnms program. Once the GUI's main window appears, choose
"Open" from the "HNMP" menu at the top center of the window. A new
window titled "Server" will pop up. In this window, type "public"
in the Community field, and the hostname of the server machine in the
Selection field. Then click the Connect button.
At this point, you can start building diagrams. Choose "New -->
Custom Status View" from the HNMS menu on the main window.
An "EDIT" window will pop up. Type an asterisk in the Selection
field, then click Add, then click the check mark at the top.
You will see a display of all the hosts that the server currently
knows about ("Processor" objects), along with their IP addresses
("Ipaddr" objects") and the subnets they are connected to ("Subnet
objects). If you have just recently started up hnmsd, the objects
will appear magenta while hnmsd is ramping up. This process
takes three minutes. Afterwards they will change to green.
When a reachable object becomes unreachable, it changes to yellow,
then red.
Feel free to experiment with the rest of the menu items. "Site" and
"WAN" diagrams may be built in a manner similar to the "Custom".
For WAN diagrams to be displayed properly, the sysLocation field of
your hosts should be in the format <any-string> <longitude> <latitude>.
For example, "NASA Ames Research Center -122.5 37.1".
RUNTIME -- PLAINTEXT
You may also run hnmstool. This program takes commands on stdin and
outputs results on stdout, so it can be used effectively from within
shell scripts. For a demonstration, we will run it interactively.
The hnmstool does not give a prompt. After starting it, wait a minute
or two for it to get the list of HNMS objects from the server.
for the HNMS daemon to pick up a good assortment of objects from the
network. Then type list. You should see a list of objects scroll down
the screen. Only hosts with SNMP agents responding to "public" will be
shown. To pick up other hosts, type hint <hostname> <community-name>.
For example:
hint snafu.nas.nasa.gov foobar
The next time you type list, you should see
processor:snafu
among the objects. To get data about an object, type
subscribe "<object>" <variable>@<interval>. For example:
subscribe "processor:snafu" sysUpTime.0@15
This will give you a report of the value of the sysUpTime.0 variable
every 15 seconds, if the variable changes. Since sysUpTime.0 constantly
changes, you will get an update on stdout every 15 seconds.