FAQs
General
Observium, Y U NO WORK?
Make sure you are using a supported operating system, a supported webserver (Apache) and have the required versions for the utilities we use (see the Installation page for more information).
Almost all problems are due to not correctly following the install guide. Observium relies on a lot of prerequisites and things being done in a certain manner, so deviation from the install guide can make things break in unexpected ways. If it doesn't work, try reinstalling it following the install guide *exactly*.
If all else fails, join our IRC channel or Mailing Lists and ask for help.
I have a device which isn't supported, what can I do?
It's not as simple as "adding the MIB", actual code needs to be written to support the device and its features. You could learn PHP and familiarise yourself with the Observium codebase and write support for it yourself.
Alternatively you can offer to financially sponsor the development of the feature. Nothing motivates a developer more than donations!
I'm getting a blank browser window on some pages, but not others
Some of the pages are more memory-consuming than others, especially if you have a lot of devices, ports, IP addresses, etc. Make sure your PHP memory setting is adequate for this. If you get blank pages, it usually isn't. Don't forget to restart Apache for the configuration to take effect!
Can I show graphs without requiring a password or login?
There are a few different ways to show graphs. You can allow passwordless graphs from anyone, anywhere, or restrict this on a IP/Subnet basis. See the Configuration Options page for more details.
My net-snmp daemon uses 100% CPU and I have a full BGP table
This is a net-snmp bug. You need to disable ipCidrRouteTable && inetCidrRouteTable.
Add this to your snmpd.conf
view all included .1 80 view all excluded .1.3.6.1.2.1.4.21 view all excluded .1.3.6.1.2.1.4.24 view system included .iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.system
All my hosts seem down to Observium / SNMP doesn't seem to work anymore!
Take a good look, maybe run an snmpget/walk command from the command line. Do you see an error similar to the following?
add_mibdir: strings scanned in from /opt/observium/mibs/.index are too large. count = 214
We are somewhat confused about this, but it seems to be a net-snmp bug. Remove the .index file from the directory and all should be well again!
Why can't I rename a host from the webinterface?
The web interface is most likely running as a different user from the user running your poller/discovery mechanism. This means that user has no permission to rename the directory. Please run the renaming command from the command line instead.
When submitting large forms such as port ignore/disable settings, not all my settings are saved. How come?
This is most likely due to a PHP setting limiting the number of form variables to be posted (max_input_vars). In that case you should see something like
PHP Warning: Unknown: Input variables exceeded 1000. To increase the limit change max_input_vars in php.ini. in Unknown on line 0, referer: ...
in your error log. Increase the setting to an appropriate number, then try again.
Where can i find Simple API documentation?
The Simple API documentation can be found within the observium pages after you enable the api in the config file, the Simple API is turned off by default. For more details about the settings see http://observium.org/wiki/Configuration_Options#Simple_API_Settings
What data does Observium send data back and why?
Each installation of Observium reports back a small array of statistics used to aid in prioritising development effort. For example, we maintain statistics on how common each OS type is, how common each SVN revision is and how large installations are.
This allows us to focus development effort on OS types which are more common, allowing us to know how up to date the average installation is, and how large a typical installation is. The latter is important when we're deciding how computationally expensive a GUI element can be.
Some graphs generated from the statistics can be found at Usage Statistics
Installation and initial setup issues
Can I run Observium in a Subdirectory?
No. We explicitly do not support running Observium in a sub-directory. It's difficult for us to properly test and causes issues with our URL parsing and URL rewriting schemes. The development team don't believe that the additional overhead of supporting sub-directory compatibility is an effective use of time :)
Possible solutions to needing to run Observium in a sub-directory include:
- Create a name-based virtualhost
- If you need HTTPS, create a self-signed certificate, or get a multi-use wildcard certificate for your domain name
- Add another IP to the server, and use that as an IP-based virtualhost
- Use mod_proxy to proxy /observium to / on another virtualhost
I can add devices through the command line tool, but the web interface tells me it cannot ping the host
Both ways of adding call the same function, so it's not a bug. Most likely you are running the command line tool as root, and your apache user has limitations (SELinux, PHP patch, etc) so it cannot execute fping.
Why can't I add my device by its IP address? / Why do I need valid hostnames and DNS?
Because parts of the auto-discovery code and protocol relationship tracking code requires valid hostnames. We made an early architectural decision to make this name the primary identification for a host.
Observium doesn't care if the name is resolvable via DNS or via /etc/hosts, but it must resolve. It *should* match the hostname the device knows itself as, but no errors will be generated if it doesn't.
Furthermore, for auto-discovery to work properly, the hostname that the device knows itself as *must* be resolvable, again either by DNS or /etc/hosts.
We hope this also helps to mitigate laziness within deployment teams. :)
What about hostnames with uppercase letters? Observium converts them to all-lowercase!
Hostnames are all lowercase, Observium helps you by correcting this issue when trying to add a host.
I have configured my Rancid config path but the configuration is not showing up on the device page
Make sure your hostnames match exactly, and the webserver user can read the configuration file (usually this means adding www-data to the rancid group).
My Router does not show IPv6 BGP sessions - how come?
Most vendors don't yet support the new BGP4 version 2 MIB, which includes support for multiple address families. Please contact your sales rep and tell them you want support for it!
I'm using Redhat/Fedora/CentOS and don't have legends on graphs!
RedHat derrived distributions need additional steps to fix their font setup.
- yum install dejavu-lgc-fonts.noarch
- add the following to your config.php :
$config['mono_font'] = "/usr/share/fonts/dejavu/DejaVuLGCSansMono.ttf";
None of my graphs are working, when I debug them, everything seems fine, but my browser tells me the image is broken!
Make sure none of your configuration files have spaces or newlines outside the <?php ?> blocks. These are otherwise sent verbatim to the browser before the graph's image data, breaking the output.
The main page works, all other pages produce a 404 error
You most likely forgot to enable mod_rewrite, or did not configure the virtualhost to allow overriding the settings through .htaccess. Please follow the installation instructions.
Why do I only get a single CPU view? A lot of information is missing from the device page
Make sure you have granted full access to your SNMP community and not just the "paranoid" level. Net-SNMP has different ways of preventing access to parts of the MIBs, the paranoid setting only gives out a small part of the information we can discover and visualize.