RRFW to Torrus migration guide

Introduction

Torrus is the new marketing name for RRFW (Round-robin Database Framework), a robust and flexible software package for data series processing. The last release of RRFW is 0.1.8. The upcoming release 1.0.0 of Torrus will introduce some significant changes and design improvements.

The directory structure of Torrus is more standards-compliant, and more convenient for system adminisrators. The user files are strictly separated from the distribution files. The XML configurations and HTML templates are being searched in multiple directories, thus there will be no longer a mixture of site-specific files with the ones from distribution.

In addition, Torrus introduces a commandline wrapper that is installed in a generic directory for user executables (by default, /usr/local/bin). This greatly simplifies the site administrator's tasks.

The plugins infrastructure is completely redesigned. The plugin installation procedure is separated from the main software installation. In addition, plugin installers set up their initialization scripts in special directories, so that there's no need for plugin initialization in torrus-siteconfig.pl and other files.

Further on, we assume that RRFW is installed in its default directory, /usr/local/rrfw-0.1, and Torrus is installed with default paths. These paths may differ in your installation. We refer to TORRUS_DISTR as the unpacked Torrus distribution path.

Software installation

Create a new user: torrus and group: torrus. The user ID that is used by Apache process must be a member of this group. Depending on the system, this user may be named as www, httpd, nobody etc. Consult your Apache configuration for details.

Install Torrus. If your system already runs RRFW release 0.1.8, all prerequisites should be already in place. Then you simply unpack the Torrus distribution, and from its directory execute

  ./configure
  make install

If required, download and unpack the Torrus plugins. Then for each plugin, execute

  torrus install_plugin <UNPACKED_PLUGIN_DIR>

The Perl configuration files

Te distribution contains a short Shell script called TORRUS_DISTR/setup_tools/replace_rrfw.sh. This script takes one file name as an argument, replaces all occurrences of RRFW to Torrus and rrfw to torrus, and finally replaces the specified file with the new one.

Copy the site configuration files from RRFW to Torrus directory:

  cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/
  cp /usr/local/rrfw-0.1/share/rrfw/rrfw-siteconfig.pl \
    conf/torrus-siteconfig.pl
  TORRUS_DISTR/setup_tools/replace_rrfw.sh conf/torrus-siteconfig.pl

If needed, follow the same procedure for devdiscover-siteconfig.pl and other site configs.

XML configuration files

The format of XML fles has not changed, so you simply copy all locally defined files into /usr/local/etc/torrus/xmlconfig.

The following Shell commands might be of help. They copy all XML files that do not occur in /usr/local/torrus/xmlconfig, the default path for distribution supplied files:

  cd /usr/local/rrfw-0.1/share/rrfw/xmlconfig/
  find . -name '*.xml' -exec test ! -f /usr/local/torrus/xmlconfig/'{}' ';' \
    -print | cpio --create --file=/tmp/allxml.cpio
  cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/xmlconfig/
  cpio --extract --make-directories --preserve-modification-time \
    --file=/tmp/allxml.cpio

After copying XML files, compile them in Torrus:

  torrus compilexml --all --verbose

Monitor actions

If you utilize the monitor daemon, you will most probably need to change the action statements.

In the action of type exec, the command parameter should be edited. RRFW was usually referencing the email notification command as $RRFW_HOME/bin/action_printemail. In Torrus, this command should be referred as $TORRUS_BIN/action_printemail.

SNMP discovery files

  cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/
  cp /usr/local/rrfw-0.1/share/rrfw/discovery/*.ddx discovery/

The treatment of output-file parameter has slightly changed. In RRFW, relative filename meant relative to the current working directory, and $XMLCONFIG macro was used for referring the default XML files directory. In Torrus, $XMLCONFIG is still supported, but it is advisory to get rid of it. Now the relative filenames refer to the user's XML directory, /usr/local/torrus/xmlconfig. Absolute filenames are used as they are.

In addition, torrus devdiscover acepts the relative input file names, and searches for them in /usr/local/torrus/discovery.

Web interface ACLs

  cd /usr/local/etc/torrus/
  /usr/local/rrfw-0.1/bin/acledit --export=acl.xml
  torrus acledit --import=acl.xml

Site-specific text templates

If you used some custom templates (HTML templates for the Web interface, or text templates for e-mail notifications), copy them to /usr/local/etc/torrus/templates. This directory should contain only your custom templates. Those delivered with the distribution packages are located in /usr/local/torrus/templates.

Apache configuration

Follow the Torrus Web interface guide and configure Apache accordingly. If needed, use the following Apache command to redirect the users which use the old URL:

  Redirect /rrfw http://host.domain.com/torrus

After changing the configuration, stop and start Apache.

Stop RRFW collector and monitor processes

Depending on your system configuration, the command would look like

  /etc/init.d/rrfw stop

Make sure that all old processes are stopped. Then remove the RRFW startup script from all rc.d directories.

Change the RRD files ownership

Depending on your system configuration, the paths for RRD files might be different.

  chown torrus:torrus /var/snmpcollector/*

Test and run processes

For testing purposes, you might want to try launching the collector and monitor processes, as follows:

  torrus collector --tree=mytree --runonce --debug

Then copy the Torrus startup script to your system's init directory and setup new symbolic links, if required. The following example should work for Sun Solaris:

  cp TORRUS_DISTR/init.d/torrus /etc/init.d
  cd /etc/rc3.d
  ln -s S90torrus ../init.d/torrus
  cd /etc/rc0.d
  ln -s K90torrus ../init.d/torrus

Run the startup script and verify that RRD files get updated.

Update the cron jobs

RRFW's cron job /usr/local/rrfw-0.1/bin/cleanup should be replaced with the analogous job from Torrus: /usr/local/torrus/bin/cleanup

Update documentation

Update your site operational manuals to reflect the new software name, paths and URLs.


Author

Copyright (c) 2004 Stanislav Sinyagin <ssinyagin@k-open.com>