Zenoss developers will be available for questions on Thursday, April 2 at 11am EDT (UTC -04:00) in the #zenoss IRC channel on  irc.freenode.net  (port 6667). Please drop in and bring your questions, answers, suggestions and feedback.  Bring your questions for our developers on the  current 2.4 beta , SSH monitoring, BSB and recent events in the Zenoss community.

We’ll log the session and repost them IRC if you can’t make it.

Don’t forget you can search for answers to common questions by visiting the Forums.

UPDATE:

Here’s Thursday’s IRC log

Dev chat 04/02/2009

other logs are available here:

IRC

Zenoss allows you to create ZenPacks through the UI and modify them (aka “Development Mode”), but not to edit imported ZenPacks. Thanks to the efforts of Ryan Matte and Chet Luther, we have this tip for restoring ZenPacks to Development Mode.

New ZenPacks

New ZenPacks can be created in Zenoss by going to the Settings->ZenPacks page and selecting the Create ZenPack… menu item on the ZenPacks page. This creates the ZenPack on the filesystem at $ZENHOME/ZenPacks/ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack and installs it into Zenoss. You may then proceed to add device classes, templates, MIBs or just about anything to the ZenPack with the Add to ZenPack menu option. This is known as “Development Mode” for the ZenPack. Once you are happy with your ZenPack, you can export it for others to use.

The Problem
The problem with your freshly exported .egg ZenPack is that once you’ve installed it on another system (or uninstalled and re-installed your new ZenPack) you can no longer add things to the ZenPack. There are 2 solutions available to resolve this issue.

Source ZenPacks
If you have the source for the ZenPack available you can simply attach to the source tree. Assuming that the source directory is

ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack, install the ZenPack with the following

zenpack --link --install ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack

followed by

zopectl restart

Your ZenPack should now be usable and back in development mode. Changes made to the ZenPack will be persisted back to the source tree, you may still export and download as necessary. When you are satisfied with your changes, you may commit them back to the Subversion repository.

Converting .eggs to Development Mode

If you wish to convert an already installed ZenPack, or to install and convert an .egg ZenPack, follow these steps.

1. Install the .egg as you would a normal egg ZenPack.
2. Restart Zope with zopectl restart
3. Copy the ZenPack development files into the .egg’s directory (the CONTENTS directory is unnecessary):
cp $ZENHOME/Products/ZenModel/ZenPackTemplate/* $ZENHOME/ZenPacks/ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack-1.0.2-py2.4.egg/

4. You may now make any modifications to the ZenPack, updating the version number, adding new device classes, etc.
5. Go into the ZenPack from the ZenPacks tab in Settings.
6. Save and Export the ZenPack. The changes will be persisted to the new .egg and the filesystem.
7. There is a minor bug in the export and download. The new version saved in the export directory will have the correct name with all the updates (e.g. ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack?-1.0.3-py2.4.egg). If you choose to “export and download” the ZenPack, it will have the original name despite the updated version (e.g. ZenPacks.community.YourZenPack?-1.0.2-py2.4.egg) or it may fail to download. Use the version in the export directory.

To discuss this tip further, please review the wiki page on the Community ZenPack Repository or in the ZenPack Development.  Thanks again Ryan and Chet!

We are proud to recognize the newest Zenoss Master, Jane Curry of Skills 1st. She has distinguished herself with her many expert contributions and generosity to the Zenoss Community, including numerous postings to the lists, wiki and documentation. Jane has written several papers on Zenoss and network management, including:

• Open Source Management Options
• Zenoss Event Management
• Crafting Zenoss Core users for events and zProperties
• Zenoss Discovery and Classification

In addition to her outstanding papers, Jane will be presenting at the UKUUG Spring 2009 Conference her session  on Managing Networks and Systems with Zenoss. So if you are at the conference this week, please thank her for us! On behalf of Zenoss, we would like to personally thank Jane and everyone else who has made Zenoss that much better through their efforts.

With Daylight Saving Time coming up this weekend in the United States, we figured it might be worth posting this tip:

Introduction

The versions of Zenoss listed in the Applies To section below suffer from a bug that causes all schedules to be shifted forward or backward anytime a DST (daylight saving time) shift occurs on your primary Zenoss server. Zenoss uses schedules on alerting rules to allow them to only be active at certain times of day, and on maintenance windows.

Resolution

A permanent solution for this issue will be included in Zenoss 2.4. Until that time there are two workarounds that can be used.

Option #1: Run a script to adjust all schedules

We have developed a script that will interrogate your system and find any schedules that have been shifted due to a DST change. The major caveat with this approach is that you must run the script AFTER the DST change occurs. We recommend as soon after as possible so your schedules will remain accurate.

Please follow these instructions to download and run the adjustSchedulesForDST.py script. Bear in mind that this script can be run at any time, and repeatedly without causing harm. However, it is only effective the first time it is run after a DST change occurs.

su - zenoss
cd $ZENHOME/bin
wget http://dev.zenoss.org/svn/trunk/bin/adjustSchedulesForDST.py
chmod 755 adjustSchedulesForDST.py
. zenfunctions
adjustSchedulesForDST.py

If your primary Zenoss server doesn’t have outbound access to the Internet you will need to download the script from the referenced URL and copy it into the $ZENHOME/bin directory on your primary Zenoss server through some other mechanism.

Option #2: Set your Zenoss server to UTC

This option will completely solve the issue with no further interaction required by you. The downside is that all times within the Zenoss web interface, and in alerts that are sent out will be shown in UTC time. This could be confusing for users who are used to working in local time only.

More Information

Applies To

Zenoss 2.3
Zenoss 2.2
Zenoss 2.1

Tickets

#3996: Daylight Savings (Time Changes) Shifts Maint Window and Alerting Schedules

This month the Zenoss Engineering team was busy producing Zenoss 2.3.3 is Now Available, a maintenance release. Next on their plate is the beta of our next major release (code named Blue Crab) due to come out in March. Blue Crab will include a new wizard-based installer to speed up Zenoss setup and new capabilities for remote monitoring of Linux and Unix servers. Your feedback can help guide future additions and improvements to the user interface. Please share your opinions by taking the Zenoss Usability Survey.

Learn how Zenoss users have benefited by using Zenoss over Big 4 soutions >>

Tip of the Month: SNMP Software Inventory for Debian and Ubuntu

In a recent forum post, user ‘rmk’ came up with a Perl script to expose the software inventory through the SNMP hrSWInstalled OID for Debian and Ubuntu machines. User ‘zarxcky’ wrote up detailed instructions for deploying the solution and getting it to work with Ubuntu. Many thanks to these two for providing a very useful guide for the Zenoss community. Tip of the Month: SNMP Software Inventory for Debian and Ubuntu machines.

Help Us Help You

User feedback is critical in helping us develop Zenoss Core to meet your needs, so please tell us what you want to monitor with Zenoss. We appreciate your time so we’ll enter you in a monthly drawing to win a cool open source Chumby like last month’s winner, Craig Reise.

Zenoss Community Day and SCaLE 7X

February 20th we conducted our first <span>Zenoss Community Day at <span>SCALE</span> 7x</span> and it was a big success by all accounts. Zenoss Client Services Engineer, Nathaniel McCallum and Zenoss Community Manager, Matt Ray, taught a full day class on how to deploy and monitor your network with Zenoss Core. We had a number of walk-ins and the class was standing room only for most of the day. On February 21st and 22nd during the Southern California Linux Expo we demo’d Zenoss products for hundreds of attendees. Congratulations to Ron Eickler who won our drawing for the Dell Mini. Thank you to all of you who stopped by, we really enjoyed getting to know so many current and future Zenoss users.

In the News

• NetworkWorld: Five Fantastic Open Source Tools for Windows Admins
• MobiusBlue Tech Blog: Open Source IT Management with Zenoss
• IT Business Edge: Going with a Small Company Has Large Rewards
• The VAR Guy: Preview: Three Trends At Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE)
• Lotta Links Podcast: Episode #105

Upcoming Events

• Zenoss Weekly Demo: Webinar, March 4th
• Florida Linux Show: Jacksonville, FL; March 9th
• Zenoss Weekly Demo: Webinar, March 11th
• Zenoss Administrator Training: Annapolis, MD; March 17th-18th
• UKUUG: London, UK; March 24th-26th
• LinuxFest NW: Bellingham, WA; April 25th

Best Regards,

Mark R. Hinkle
Vice President, Community
Zenoss Inc.