[Announce] Monit 5.0

[Jan-Henrik Haukeland]

Monit 5.0 is here!

With more than 50 new features and bug fixes we are happy to
announce that Monit 5.0 is available and can be downloaded today.

Download from: http://mmonit.com/monit/download/

MD5 checksum:    61e13c0c6f5ad396e12a7692135d8737
SHA256 checksum:  
009cab24f006c6ae7cb002b2f2e40b0b6f8563c184613c83e61e449818c3ea14
Change log:      http://mmonit.com/monit/dist/CHANGES.txt


Version 5.0:
------------

NEW FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS:
* M/Monit support added. If you run Monit on more than one
server, you can use M/Monit to manage and control all your
Monit enabled servers from one simple Web Interface. See
http://mmonit.com/ for details.

* Support use of symbolic links in filesystem check. Thanks to
Aleksander Kamenik for suggestion. Example:
  check filesystem rootfs path
       /dev/disk/by-uuid/4ef973f7-67d1-4bb0-8223-cb1c692b72e4
    if space usage > 95% then alert
    if inode usage > 95% then alert

* If no 'set mailserver' was defined in monitrc, Monit tried to
fallback to localhost:25 SMTP server. This fallback was removed
since it may be confusing. If you want to deliver mail alerts
from Monit, the 'set mailserver' option is necessary. In case
it is missing, Monit will log appropriate error and hint to add
it.

* The generic send/expect protocol test limited the expect input
to 256 bytes. It's possible to set the input buffer for expect
globally - for example: set expectbuffer 20 kb Thanks to Asil
Carlin for suggestion.

* The following event types were added CONTENT, FSFLAGS, PID and
PPID and the following generic event types CHANGED and MATCH were
removed and replaced by the above types and with the existing SIZE,
CHECKSUM, TIMESTAMP events so the information is more specific
The event types are internal to Monit and unless you have used
either CHANGED or MATCH event in your alert filters, no change
is necessary (alerts are delivered as usual, the tests just use
different types internally).

* Monit now generates a unique id on first start and store the id
in a permanent file. This id is used in protocol communication
between Monit and M/Monit to pair a Monit instance with it's
host entry in M/Monit. By default the id file is placed in
$HOME/.monit.id. The location can be changed by using the set
idfile statement, for example:
  set idfile /var/monit.id

* Monit now keep its service monitoring state even on Monit
restart. Previously Monit dropped the state when it was stopped
correctly. Services in manual monitoring mode will remember the
monitoring state across Monit restarts. If Monit is used in a
cluster, it is recommended to place the state file in a
temporary filesystem incase the primary machine will crash and
the the spare machine takeover, the state will be dropped on
reboot for the crashed machine and the services in manual
monitoring mode won't be started on reboot. For example the
"set statefile /tmp/monit.state" can be used to place the state
file in the /tmp/ filesystem.

* Added a protocol test for testing the LMTP protocol. Thanks
to Fco. Javier Felix for patch.

* Added the start delay option for daemon statement which allows
to pause Monit on its startup for a while. If monitored
services are started by init scripts in parallel on system
boot, Monit may be too fast and detect that the service is not
running (yet) and restart the service. Note that it's still
recommended Monit is setup to be responsible for service
startup (that is, don't use init to start Monit controlled
services, instead use Monit). This will ensure correct startup
without need for a start delay since Monit will have full
control of service startup. Many users start services from init
on boot anyway, so in such cases this option will solve their
problems. Default start delay is 0 which corresponds to the
current behavior. Example syntax which will make Monit wait one
minute before starting its first monitoring cycle:
--8<--
  set daemon 5 with start delay 60
--8<--
Thanks to Fco. Javier Felix for patch.

* Added PAM support for Monit http interface authentication. Note
that PAM is not supported on all platforms - currently works on
Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD. Monit uses the PAM service "monit".
Here is a Monit PAM service example for Mac OS X which is able
to authenticate system users for Monit access -
/etc/pam.d/monit:
--8<--
  # monit: auth account password session
  auth       sufficient     pam_securityserver.so
  auth       sufficient     pam_unix.so
  auth       required       pam_deny.so
  account    required       pam_permit.so
--8<--
And configuration for monitrc which allows only group admins
to access the http interface:
--8<--
  set httpd port 2812 allow @admin
--8<--
See the PAM manual page for details on how to configure the PAM
service on your system and the available PAM plugins. Thanks to
Wilhelm Meier for patch.

* Added more detailed reports for Monit resource tests on service
recovery. Thanks to Lars Kotthoff for patch.

* Set locale to C.

* Added a protocol test for testing the SIP protocol which is
used by popular communication servers such as Asterisk and
FreeSWITCH. We received two patches for this protocol and have
taken code from both and merged them. Many thanks to Bret
McDanel and to Pierrick Grasland for supplying the patches.

* Added MONIT_DESCRIPTION to the list of environment variables
available to programs started by monit. Thanks to Morten
Bressendorff Schmidt for patch.

* If a service group is specified for Monit CLI action,
Monit no longer requires the "all" verb, so the following
command is possible:
  monit -g web stop
If group is not specified (i.e. the -g option is omitted), the
service name or "all" is still required as a safeguard.

* Added an option to the 'set mailserver' statement so it is
possible to override the hostname used in SMTP EHLO/HELO and in
the Message-ID header when sending mail. Monit defaults to use
the localhost name. I.e. what you get when executing this
command 'uname -n'. Overriding the host name can be useful if
the host does not have a DNS entry and if the receiving
mailserver uses DNS verification as spam protection. The new
override option is:
set mailserver foo.bar.baz using hostname "my.monit.host"

* A new EVENT_ACTION type was added which reports actions
performed on Monit's administrator request (either via web
interface or CLI). If you don't want to received these events,
you can set the mail-filter for "action" event type.

* NOTA BENE: Monit start action is synchronous now. This improves
the startup sequence for dependent services, since Monit will
wait for parent service to start before trying to start the
child.

* It is now possible to define execution timeout for start and
stop commands. That is, how long Monit will wait after
executing a command before it assume execution failed. If the
timeout option is omitted, Monit defaults to 30 seconds. You
can override the timeout for example for services which are
starting slower.
Example syntax:
  start program = "/bin/foo start" with timeout 60 seconds

* The event passed state is renamed to succeeded as this name
more reflects the state of things.

* The device service test is renamed to filesystem.

BUGFIXES:

* Some linux virtualization platforms report CPU count as 0.
Monit then dynamically disabled CPU usage monitoring. In such
case we now override the CPU count from 0 to 1 so resource
usage monitoring can continue. Thanks to Jenny Hopkins for
report.

* Increased the server socket backlog queue which will make Monit
able to handle more services. Thanks to Jochen Kramer.

* Fixed #24866: Email messages such as: cpu wait usage check
succeeded [current cpu wait usage=17.4%] were displayed as
"...usage<SOMEGARBAGE>.4%". The problem was incorrect transfer
encoding header in the email (the body itself was OK). Thanks
to Dave Cheney for report.

* When a Monit shutdown requested was issued while Monit were
working and testing services, Monit did not shutdown until all
work were done, i.e. until all services were tested. Monit will
now shutdown faster - as soon as it finish testing the current
service.

* Monit blocked/unblocked SIGTERM, SIGINT SIGHUP and SIGUSR1
signals during operation to protect certain code sections. When
a signal was sent during such a time, for example to stop
Monit, it was dropped and had to be retried in order to stop
Monit. This limitation is now removed and signals will be
processed at any time. Thanks to Nicola Tiling for report.

* If the Monit httpd allow option did not include a
user:password, Monit CLI logged the following error (even if
the action was performed anyway):
   Cleartext credentials needed for basic authorization!
This error was false - even access restriction based on
host/net is sufficient - user and password is just one of
possible options (not requirement). Thanks to Gilad Benjamini
for report.

* Allow localhost as a value for the host header in the http
protocol test instead of setting an empty host header and let
the http server decide

* The 'if changed checksum ...' test can now be used even if a
monitored file doesn't exist at Monit startup. Thanks to Joe
Shang for report.

* If both event handlers (M/Monit and mail alerts) temporarily
failed at once and event queue was enabled, events will be
stored in the queue and delivered in the next cycle. However, a
bug caused delivery to be retried for every cycle for both
handlers if just one of them was recovered. Monit could then
deliver the same message multiple times until both handlers
recovered. The problem is now fixed and only one copy of the
event is sent even if only one handler did recover.

* Make unit in size test optional and default to byte unless
specified. So it is possible to write, if size > 1000 then ..

* Fixed handling of invalid input files in event queue handler.
Thanks to Fco.Javier Felix for patch.

* Set the content type to text/html for Monit web interface POST
responses. Thanks to Rich Drummond for patch.

* Fixed #23530: configure script will return error if bison,
byacc or yacc are not found at Monit compile time.

* Fix CPU and memory monitoring on Solaris (it was disabled on
Monit start)

* AIX fixes and extensions, Monit should run on AIX without
problems, including cpu, memory and filesystem monitoring
(tested with AIX 5.3). Thanks to Brian Downey for support
and help.

* HP-UX fixes and extensions, Monit should run on HP-UX without
problems, including cpu, memory and filesystem monitoring.
Thanks to Brian Downey for support and help.

* Fixed #23467: Don't exit, only issue a warning if the "include"
statement did not find any files to include.

* Fixed #23530: Event queue did not work with the default
unlimited slots.

* Fixed #23617: The process cpu usage is initializing in the
first cycle so the value is set to 0% - if the 'cpu usage <
xyz%' test was used to check that the process usage is higher
then given level, it was always true. Monit now skips the
process cpu usage check in the first cycle.

* Make sure Monit alerts has a unique message id. Thanks to Steve
Purcell for report

* Fixed possible crash when Monit is watching VPS environment on
Linux which reports number of CPUs as 0. Thanks to Marius
Schmidt for report.

* Cleanup event states during a service stop/unmonitor so old
events are not sent when the service is started/monitored again.

* Fixed #21989: Monit could start two instances of the process
when service restart is performed and the process is starting
slowly. Thanks to Nick Upson, Aaron Scamehorn and David Greaves
for report.

* Fixed #21550: Fix crash when Monit event queue contained an
empty file. Thanks to Douglas J Hunley for report.

* Fixed possible crash when the 'if changed checksum' test was
used along with restart action. Thanks to Brian Candler for
report.

* Fixed #22075: Allow using a mail address as username when using
SMTP authentication.

* Fixed #22191 and #19823: If the file content test does not match
anymore, reset the service error state. (Previous versions did
not clear the error state and kept showing a match in the status
listing and in the http interface).

* The 'if changed size ...' test can now be used even if the
monitored file does not exist on monit's start.

* If a htpasswd file is used to control Monit http interface
access and the hash type is set to MD5 but the file contains
wrong format (non-MD5), report the error and keep running.
Formerly Monit exited with an assert exception. Thanks to
Adrian Bridgett for report.

BACKWARD INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES:
* The current CPU usage test which checked the cpu usage of the
process itself plus the cpu usage of child processes was
renamed to TOTALCPU (otherwise it works the same). The new CPU
usage test checks the CPU usage of the process itself only.
This change was introduced to align the syntax with MEMORY and
TOTALMEMORY tests and to allow to test the CPU usage of
processes which fork child processes but the user don't want to
include children (such as Mythtv). Users who are using the CPU
check for services like Apache webserver to watch total cpu
utilization (including children) should rename the CPU
statement in their configuration to TOTALCPU.


Thanks a lot to all who have helped with this release and
submitted bug reports, patches and suggested new features. We
do not plan to stop now and hope you all will continue to find
Monit useful and continue to help out.

The best to all users of Monit, the Monit team