Xymon with thttpd on Debian Linux

       244 words, 2 minutes

Here’s a bunch of quick notes about installing Xymon on a Debian server using the tiny/turbo/throttling HTTP server. It is not that complicated but there are a few things to tweak to have it running.

Install the Web and Xymon server:

  # apt-get install thttpd thttpd-util xymon

The “thttpd-util” package contains “thtpasswd” which is used to create a password file to be used by thttpd.

Create the authentication file that will filter Xymon access:

  # thtpasswd -c /var/lib/hobbit/www/.htpasswd admin
  Adding password for admin.
  New password:
  Re-type new password:
  # chown hobbit:hobbit /var/lib/hobbit/www/.htpasswd
  # sudo chmod 0640 /var/lib/hobbit/www/.htpasswd

I am using several instances of thttpd on this particular server ; to run ultra-light Web applications. So I created an alternate thttpd configuration and start it without the init.d script:

  # cp -p /etc/thttpd/thttpd.conf /etc/thttpd/xymon-thttpd.conf
  # vi /etc/thttpd/xymon-thttpd.conf
  (...)
  port=8080
  dir=/var/lib/hobbit/www
  user=hobbit
  cgipat=/hobbit-*cgi/*sh
  globalpasswd
  symlinks
  (...)
  
  # vi /etc/rc.local
  /usr/sbin/thttpd -C /etc/thttpd/xymon-thttpd.conf -i /var/run/xymon-thttpd.pid

Now, the tricky part. Xymon has loads of resources installed allover the Debian file-system. It is probably nice for an application but it sucks when it comes to publishing it using chroot. What I did is copy the required resources inside the Web chroot:

  # cd /var/lib/hobbit/www/
  # for DIR in gifs help menu; do mv $DIR $DIR.orig && cp -pr /usr/share/hobbit/$DIR .; done
  # cp -pr /usr/lib/hobbit/cgi-bin hobbit-cgi
  # cp -pr /usr/lib/hobbit/cgi-secure hobbit-seccgi

You don’t have to copy the seccgi files if you don’t want on-line management.

That’s it! Nearly painless.

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