Month: February 2012

Windows Update kills SSL websites

Here a scenario for you, my company supports around 100 customers worldwide and as that is primarily applications/ CNC support we need access to there system quite often in order to make relevant changes etc. So what happened one day when one of our regular customers has an issue and their VPN connection which works through a browser interface is not working?

Well, naturally I try it on a number of other machines and browsers to find that it is working on them. So that tells me its not the customer firewall blocking our IP and our firewall isn’t blocking theirs (we have no machine specific rules internally) – so then I’m thinking it must be in the Internet Options, but then Firefox and Chrome aren’t always affected by these and its happening in those browsers too.

The Solution~:
Remove Windows Update KB2585542 – What a pain in the butt this is! – seems it messes will ActiveX-killbits and some old fashioned SSL settings. However our customer isn’t an IT company, they have a small team of support staff and no budget to improve their VPN, and therefore I’m afraid I have no choice but to ensure my staff do not install that update!

Nagios Notification Script

Originally posted at johnnyward.co.uk (http://www.johnnyward.co.uk/nagios-notification-script/)

I decided to write my own script for Nagios to send emails to external addresses when MS Exchange goes down in our organisation (which has been happening quite often lately!)

my exchangescript.sh file is called by a command created in the nagios command.cfg file as below:
#Exchange notifications
define command{
command_name notify_ex_mail
command_line sh /etc/nagios3/exchangescript.sh “$NOTIFICATIONTYPE$” “$SERVICEDESC$” “$HOSTALIAS$” “$HOSTADDRESS$” “$SERVICESTATE$” “$LONGDATETIME$” “$SERVICEOUTPUT$” “$CONTACTEMAIL$”
}

The “$PARAMETER$” inputs are created by nagios and therefore would not make sense outside of a Nagios config file.

my exchangescript.sh file is here:
#!/bin/bash
## Send mail notification when nagios detects a problem – manual overide from Nagios defaults ##
## Script By Jonathan Ward 26/09/2011 ##
##Parameter List as defined in /etc/nagios3/commands.cfg
## $1 = Notification Type e.g. “PROBLEM”
## $2 = Service Description e.g. “Explorer.exe” OR “SMTP Status”
## $3 = Host Alias e.g “MyExchangeServer”
## $4 = Host Address e.g. “192.168.1.1”
## $5 = Service State e.g. “CRITICAL”
## $6 = Long Date and Time e.g. “Mon Sept 26 16:07:21 BST 2011”
## $7 = Service Output
# #$8 = Contact Email
##Set Message Subject – spaces won’t work?
msgsubject=’Exchange Issue’
##Set Email Addresses with spaces not commas etc.
msgto=”EMAIL ADDRESSES GO HERE”
##Set Message Body
msgbody=”Nagios is reporting $1 on $3 \n \nService $2 State is: $5 \n \nTime Reported: $6″
##Create subject in file /etc/nagios3/mailbody
#echo -e “$msgbody” > /etc/nagios3/mailbody
##Command to send email with subject and body
#mail -s “$msgsubject” “$msgto” < /etc/nagios3/mailbody #Using external file as body
echo -e “‘$msgbody'” | mail -s “$msgsubject” “$msgto” #using internal echo as body – prints -e in emails???
##delete body file for next run
#rm -f /etc/nagios3/mailbody
##Debugging lines go here…
# echo -e “$1 \n$2 \n$3 \n$4 \n$5 \n$6 \n$7 \n$8” > /root/scriptdebug #Copies values of parameters on seperate lines in /root/scriptdebug file
##TO TEST SCRIPT##
## /etc/nagios3/exchangescript.sh “notifcation type” “service description” “host alias” “host address” “service state” “long date time” “service output” “contact email”

Linux Script for monitoring Machine Room temperatures

Following on from one of my first projects at BMS, where I installed a server monitoring solution called Nagios, I have taken things one step further and started using the nagios scripts to provide in depth monitoring which I can target at specific people etc. I have used my knowledge gained from my older Nagios Notifcation Email script as reposted on this blog here.

The plan was to use the Dell OpenManage plugins that I spent so long configuring within Nagios, to send temperature updates via email. The final script (after 4+ hours testing etc.) looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
##ThermoMail.sh
## Send mail notification of Machine Room Temperatures##
## Script By Jonathan Ward 01/02/2012##

##./gettemp.sh (was spereate script)##
rm /root/temperatures
echo -e “Machine Room 1 status: ” > /root/temperatures
/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage -H [ipaddress] –only temp >> /root/temperatures
echo -e “\n\nMachine Room 2 status: ” >> /root/temperatures
/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_openmanage -H [ipaddress] –only temp >> /root/temperatures
####

##Set Message Subject
msgsubject=’Machine Room Temperatures’

##Set Email Addresses with spaces not commas etc.
msgto=”mail@example.com“

##Command to send email with subject and body
mail -s “$msgsubject” “$msgto” < /root/temperatures

##DEBUGGING LINES
#echo -e “$msgbody” > /root/mailtest

Now I know this looks a little crude, and could be tidied up with some symbolic links etc. but it is a simple solution and I have scheduled a cron job to run the script 4 times a day…

 

The output in the email looks like this: