Title: Monitor your remote host network quality using smokeping on

	Title: Monitor your remote host network quality using smokeping on
	OpenBSD
	Author: Solène
	Date: 26 March 2023
	Tags: nocloud openbsd networking
	Description: In this article you will learn how to install and setup
	Smokeping on OpenBSD in order to monitor the network quality of remote
	hosts.

	# Introduction

	If you need to more the network quality of a link, or the network
	availability of a remote host, I'd recommend you to take a look at
	Smokeping.

	Smokeping official Website

	Smokeping is a Perl daemon that will regularly run a command (fping,
	some dns check, etc…) multiple times to check the availability of the
	remote host, but also the quality of the link, including the standard
	deviation of the response time.

	It becomes very easy to know if a remote host is flaky, or if the link
	where Smokeping runs isn't stable any more when you see that all the
	remote hosts have connectivity issues.

	Let me explain how to install and configure it on OpenBSD 7.2 and 7.3.

	# Installation

	Smokeping comes in two parts, but they are in the same package, the
	daemon components to run it 24/7 to gather metrics, and the fcgi
	component used to render the website for visualizing data.

	First step is to install the `smokeping` package.

	```shell
	# pkg_add smokeping
	```

	The package will also install the file
	`/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/smokeping` giving explanations for
	the setup. It contains a lot of instructions, from the setup to
	advanced configuration, but without many explanations if you are new to
	smokeping.

	## The daemon

	Once you installed the package, the first step is to configure
	smokeping by editing the file `/etc/smokeping/config` as root.

	Under the `* General *` section, you can change the variables
	`owner` and `contact`, this information is displayed on Smokeping HTML
	interface, so if you are in company and some colleague look at the
	graphs, they can find out who to reach if there is an issue with
	smokeping or with the links. This is not useful if you use it for
	yourself.

	Under the `* Alerts *` section, you can configure the emails
	notifications by configuring `to` and `from` to match your email
	address, and a custom address for smokeping emails origin.

	Then, under `* Targets *` section, you can configure each host to
	monitor. The syntax is unusual though.

	* lines starting with `+ SomeSingleWord` will create a category with
	attributes and subcategories. Attribute `title` is used to give a name
	to it when showing the category, and `menu` is the name displayed on
	the sidebar on the website.
	* lines starting with `++ SomeSingleWord` will create a subcategory for
	a host. Attributes `title` and `menu` works the same as the first
	level, and `host` is used to define the remote host to monitor, it can
	be a hostname or an IP address.

	That's for the simplest configuration file. It's possible to add new
	probes such as "SSH Ping", DNS, Telnet or LDAP...

	Let me show a simple example of targets configuration I'm using:

	```smokeping
	* Targets *

	probe = FPing

	menu = Top
	title = Network Latency Grapher
	remark = Welcome to the SmokePing

	+ Remote
	menu= Remote
	title= Remote hosts

	++ Persopw

	menu = perso.pw
	title = My server perso.pw
	host = perso.pw

	++ openportspl

	menu = openports.pl
	title = openports.pl VM at openbsd.amsterdam
	host = openports.pl

	++ grifonfr

	menu = grifon.fr
	title = grifon.fr VPN endpoint
	host = 89.234.186.37

	+ LAN
	menu = Lan
	title = Lan network at home

	++ solaredge

	menu = solaredge
	title = solardedge
	host = 10.42.42.246

	++ modem

	menu = ispmodem
	title = ispmodem
	host = 192.168.1.254
	```

	Now you configured smokeping, you need to enable the service and run
	it.

	```shell
	# rcctl enable smokeping
	# rcctl start smokeping
	```

	If everything is alright, `rcctl check smokeping` shouldn't fail, if
	so, you can read `/var/log/messages` to find why it's failing.
	Usually, it's a `+` line that isn't valid because of a non-authorized
	character or a space.

	I recommend to always add a public host of a big platform that is known
	to be working reliably all the time, to have a comparison point against
	all your other hosts.

	## The Web Interface

	Now the daemon is running, you certainly want to view the graphs
	produced by Smokeping. Reusing the example from the pkg-readme file,
	you can configure httpd web server with this:

	```httpd.conf
	server "smokeping.example.org" {
	listen on * port 80
	location "/smokeping/smokeping.cgi*" {
	fastcgi socket "/run/smokeping.sock"
	root "/"
	}
	}
	```

	Your service will be available at the address
	`http://smokeping.example.org/smokeping/smokeping.cgi`.

	For this to work, we need to run a separate FCGI server, fortunately
	packaged as an OpenBSD service.

	```shell
	# rcctl enable smokeping_fcgi
	# rcctl start smokeping_fcgi
	```

	Note that there is a way to pre-render all the HTML interface by a cron
	job, but I don't recommend it as it will drain a lot of CPU for
	nothing, except if you have many users viewing the interface and that
	they don't need interactive zoom on the graphs.

	# Conclusion

	Smokeping is very effective because of the way it renders data, you can
	easily spot issues in your network that a simple ping or response time
	wouldn't catch.

	Please note it's better to have two smokeping setup at different places
	in order to monitor each other remote smokeping link quality.
	Otherwise, if a remote host appear flaky, you can't entirely be sure if
	the Internet access of the smokeping is flaky, or if it's the remote
	host, or a peering issue.

	Here is the 10 days graph for a device I have on my LAN but connected
	to the network using power line networking.

	Monitoring graph of a device connected on LAN using power line network

	Don't forget to read `/usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/smokeping` and
	the official documentation if you want a more complicated setup.