livestatus-service 0.3.4
Exposes MK livestatus to the outside world over HTTP
License: MIT

livestatus-service
==================

.. image:: https://coveralls.io/repos/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service/badge.png?branch=master
    :target: https://coveralls.io/r/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service?branch=master
    :alt: Coverage status

.. image:: https://travis-ci.org/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service.png?branch=master
   :alt: Travis build status image
   :align: left
   :target: https://travis-ci.org/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service

.. image:: http://badge.fury.io/py/livestatus_service.png
    :target: http://badge.fury.io/py/livestatus_service
    :alt: Latest PyPI version

Background
----------

Icinga is a pretty cool monitoring solution (especially when compared to
a monolithic dinosaur like nagios) but unfortunately it lacks any means
of remote-control which is a sine qua non requirement for deployment
automation. The most obvious use case is scheduling downtimes
programmatically.

`MK-Livestatus <http://mathias-kettner.de/checkmk_livestatus.html>`_ is
a
Nagios/`Icinga <http://docs.icinga.org/latest/en/int-mklivestatus.html>`_
extension (the Shinken kernel has it built-in) that allows queries and
commands by accessing a UNIX socket on the machine. An added benefit is
that queries always return up-to-date information as opposed to the
ominous global state file (searching for "status.dat" should get you
going on this). Unfortunately having a local socket also means that
accessing livestatus over the network is not possible out-of-the-box.
Using SSH is just awkward and exposing the socket through TCP is
probably a huge security flaw.

Livestatus-service solves this problem by exposing the full
functionality of the socket through a simple HTTP API. Due to using
httpd and flask, you can build in authentication easily - put basicAuth
in flask directly or the httpd access configuration of your choice.

Why livestatus-service?
-----------------------

-  Livestatus access with no need for passwordless SSH or exposure of
   TCP sockets
-  Nice, customizable query result formatting
-  Built-in documentation
-  Built-in access to the icinga command pipe
-  Tested codebase

License
-------

MIT

One-step checkout, test, build
------------------------------

::

    sudo pip install pyb-init && pyb-init github ImmobilienScout24 : livestatus_service

Afterwards, building and packaging can be done with

::

    source venv/bin/activate pyb cd target/dist/livestatus-service-$VERSION
    python setup.py bdist_rpm

Running
-------

::

    source venv/bin/activate
    python bootstrap.py

Deploying
---------

Build a software package.

The application will try to run as `WSGI behind a httpd
webserver <http://flask.pocoo.org/docs/deploying/mod_wsgi/>`_ by
including configuration in ``/etc/httpd/conf.d/``.

Building an RPM will work out-of-the-box with ``setup.py bdist_rpm``,
other packages should be easy to build too. The application should work
out-of-the-box.

Configuration
-------------

Application configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

See `the example config
file <https://github.com/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service/blob/master/livestatus.cfg>`_.
Configuration should be in /etc/livestatus.cfg

Webserver configuration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By default the service will want to run on port 8080 but
you can change this by modifying `the build
configuration <https://github.com/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service/blob/master/build.py>`_
before building. Changing the value of
::

    project.port_to_run_on = "8080"

will ensure that pybuilder patches
in `the correct port in the httpd configuration
files <https://github.com/ImmobilienScout24/livestatus_service/blob/master/src/main/python/livestatus_service/livestatus_service.conf>`_.

Authentication
--------------

Server-side httpd authentication
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Put a file named
::

    /etc/httpd/conf.d/livestatus_authorization.conf

on your server. The file should consist of access restrictions, e.G.

::

    <Location />
      Order deny,allow
      Deny from all
      AuthName "Account for Livestatus service"
      AuthType Basic
      Require group administrators
      Require valid-user
      Satisfy Any
    </Location>

If the file is not present then there will be no authentication.