[opennms-bugs] Custom Categories

[Tarus B. <ta...@so...>]

A customer of ours had the following problem: they wanted to add and
remove devices from the Categories screen dynamically. Currently, they
would create a rule similar to ipaddress == "192.168.0.1" && ipaddress ==
"192.168.1.17", etc. so every time they wanted to add or remove a device
they would need to edit the categories.xml file and restart OpenNMS.

Since the rules in the categories file can access the database directly,
we came up with a solution of creating a new table, which will consist of
a list of IP addresses and custom category names, and then all that would
need to be done is to populate this table. I thought I would share this
method in case anyone was interested.

1) First, add the table to the database:

psql -U opennms opennms

create table customCat
   (ipAddr varchar(16) not null,
    constraint pk_ipAddr primary key (ipAddr),
    custCategory varchar(16) );

This will map IP address to a 16 character custom category name. You could
use an integer or a longer/shorter field if you want.

2) Edit /opt/OpenNMS/etc/database-schema.xml

add at the bottom, before </database-schema>

<table name="customCat">
     <join column="ipAddr" table="ipInterface" table-column="ipAddr"/>
     <column name="ipAddr visable="false"/>
     <column name="custCategory"/>
</table>

This allows the filter system within OpenNMS to utilize the custCategory
field. See http://faq.opennms.org/faq/fom-serve/cache/105.html for a
longer explanation.

3) Edit /opt/OpenNMS/etc/categories.xml

add new categories:

<category>
     <label><![CDATA[Test Number One]]></label>
     <comment>Test Category Number One</comment>
     <normal>99</normal>
     <warning>97</warning>
     <service>ICMP</service>
     <rule><![CDATA[custCategory == "Test1"]]></rule>
</category>

<category>
     <label><![CDATA[Test Number Two]]></label>
     <comment>Test Category Number Two</comment>
     <normal>99</normal>
     <warning>97</warning>
     <service>ICMP</service>
     <rule><![CDATA[custCategory == "Test2"]]></rule>
</category>

Note that you need to state the services you are interested in monitoring
in the category definition. These two test categories will just look for
ICMP.

4) Edit /opt/OpenNMS/etc/viewsdisplay.xml

<category><![CDATA[Test Number One]]></category>
<category><![CDATA[Test Number Two]]></category>

This will allow the new categories to be displayed. Note: do not use
special charaters in the CDATA name, use entities: i.e. don't use "ICMP &
HTTP", use "ICMP &amp HTTP".

5) /sbin/service opennms restart

So that the changes will take effect.

6) Now, just add entries into the customCat table:

psql -U opennms opennms

insert into customCat values ('192.168.0.1', 'Test1');
insert into customCat values ('192.168.0.2', 'Test2');

wait a minute and then refresh the screen. This will add the ICMP service
for 192.168.0.1 to the category "Test1" and the ICMP service for
192.168.0.2 to the category "Test2".

-T


-- 
Tarus Balog
Consultant
Sortova Consulting Group, http://www.sortova.com
+1-919-696-7625
ta...@so...