new version (4), some ideas

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neodg
Posts: 7
Joined: 28 Mar 2016 08:03

new version (4), some ideas

Post by neodg »

Hi!

I am an administrator for over 20 years now and for me are some points really important:
  • Service monitoring for all services and restart if fails (with mail to admin)
  • Show the system (service) status in the webinterface (all services for E.F.A!)
  • Redundancy (!!!), an fast way to setup a second E.F.A with the same config as the first one, but no dependency for the first one
  • The ability to block sender completely (yes i know, we should not do that)
About the operating system: i like debian, but the release cycle is much to short, and after an upgrade, half of the system wont work, so in my oppinion, centos is ok.

And again: thanks for all!
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darky83
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Re: new version (4), some ideas

Post by darky83 »

  • Service monitoring is on the todo list
  • service status in webinterface not so much, as you might know we use mailwatch as primary interface, but we take a look at it, might be a way to incorporate it without breaking mailwatch.
  • replication is on the todo list (2nd server has the same config as the first one
  • The new version will be CentOS based, primarly for the long release cycle and the update methode (version 4 will require auto update)
When we check our update log files we see lots of version checking in that are old, so there are admins out there that install and never update the systems :naughty: .
Unpatched systems cause a security risk so from version 4 auto update is mandatory (ofcourse if you really don't want it you can disable it), and with CentOS this works great.

It will take a while to get v4 ready as a first beta, but we still aim for a release in 2017 :ugeek:
Version eFa 4.x now available!
henk
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Re: new version (4), some ideas

Post by henk »

Hi,
Another idea?

To monitor services the easy way, why not take a look at Xymon? Redhat and Debian are supported.http://xymon.sourceforge.net/
It's always a good idea to separate things to prevent dependencies with other packages used. ( the minimal approach)
Just install a Xymon server and monitor everything you want.
The xymon client is quite small with few resources.

Image

Image

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To manage efa services or configs or setup Xymon server, Puppet will make things easy, but to set up Puppet, that's a different story.
https://puppet.com/
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buzzzo
Posts: 94
Joined: 03 Feb 2014 09:09

Re: new version (4), some ideas

Post by buzzzo »

For service monitorimg I'd suggest monit.
It Dann simple and has a embedded web interface that could be proxed on apache.
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pdwalker
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Joined: 18 Mar 2015 09:16

Re: new version (4), some ideas

Post by pdwalker »

In my opinion, EFA should remain focused on providing the best mail/antispam gateway service as possible.

Spending time adding monitoring features by the EFA developers is not a good use of their time given that others have already specialized in providing monitoring systems that are already very capable.

If I were to monitor my EFA box, I'd use zabbix because zabbix provides all the features I need and all I have to do is install the agent and configure it for my system. That's just my preference. (I don't currently monitor my efa box because it is just so bloody reliable. The only time it doesn't work is after I've made some kind of stupid change that breaks something but then I'm on hand to notice I've done something done)

Just my 2 cents worth.
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shawniverson
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Re: new version (4), some ideas

Post by shawniverson »

I agree. Every time we layer extra services on eFa, it adds to the overall system requirements. I want to keep it simple. If we do add monitoring to v4, it will need to be a very simple method, built-in, and just focus on the core services, perhaps via a status dashboard (red/green indicator) and simple service check without the need of yet another external package.
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