Foglight 5.9.7 - Installing Foglight on a UNIX System with an External MySQL Database

Monitoring the Management Server host

During the installation, or upgrade, a HostAgent is automatically created to monitor the host where the Management Server, the embedded Foglight Agent Manager, and embedded database run. The health of this host directly affects the health and performance of Foglight.

Information about the status and data collection of the agent are available on this dashboard.

For more information about monitoring activities and exploring the data collected for the host, see the Foglight for Infrastructure User and Reference Guide.

Next steps

To install cartridges, see Installing and Upgrading Cartridges.

Migrating data from an existing database

The contents of the MySQL® database can be copied to another MySQL instance via an export/import cycle.

The following procedure performs a full export of the database and can be run against a database currently in use by a server.

NOTE: The Foglight servers must be stopped during the import process.

When moving a database between environments, care should be taken to ensure that the Foglight schema version is lower or equal to the Management Server version in the destination environment, as an upgrade to a new schema is possible. Start the Management Server with the option:

-Dfoglight.database.upgrade=true

or run foglight_db_upgrade.sh.

Running the Management Server FAQ

On UNIX®, Foglight uses the Quest Common Process Runner to run processes such as the embedded database, the embedded Agent Manager, and command actions.

Newer Linux® distributions have enabled new kernel security extensions from the SELinux project at the NSA (National Security Agency). SELinux is an NSA project to improve the security of Linux through Mandatory Access Control (MAC). These extensions allow finer-grained control over system security. However, SELinux also changes some default system behaviors, such as shared library loading, which can be problematic to third-party programs.

If you see the error message “cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied” when you start the Management Server, your SELinux configuration is preventing IDL (the Interface Definition Language) from launching.

To rectify this issue, you can perform one of the following workarounds:

For more information about SELinux, consult your Linux® distribution vendor.

If you encounter this problem, the cause might be that the MySQL database file my.cnf has been made world-writable.

Do not make the MySQL database file my.cnf world-writable, for example by issuing the command chmod a+w <foglight_home>/mysql/my.cnf. Foglight and the database cannot start if there is world access to the configuration file my.cnf.

If Management Servers that are not part of a particular HA partition are configured to multicast using the same port on the same subnet as the Management Servers within the HA partition, errors like the following appear in the logs for the Management Servers that are configured in this way:

ERROR [UDP mcast receiver] org.jgroups.protocols.UDP - message does not have a UDP header

or

ERROR [UDP mcast receiver] org.jgroups.protocols.UDP - discarded message from different group

If you see this type of message, change the cluster multi-cast port of the servers that are reporting the error. In addition, if you plan to have multiple High Availability (HA) partitions on the same sub-net, configure a different cluster multicast port for each HA partition. See Configuring the cluster multicast port used in High Availability mode for instructions.

IMPORTANT: In both cases described here (resolving errors and planning to have multiple HA partitions on the same subnet), the primary server and secondary servers within each HA partition must be configured to use the same cluster multicast port.

It is recommended that you do not use this method to stop the Management Server. However, if you do use this method, follow the following workaround.

The Foglight browser interface requires JavaScript. You may need to modify the security settings in your web browser to enable this functionality. Depending on your browser, this setting may be labeled either “Enable JavaScript” (for example, in Firefox®), or “Enable Active Scripting” (for example, in Internet Explorer®).

The default link to the login page points to http://localhost:8080. In some instances, this link may not correspond to the URL of your Foglight server, resulting in the link not working. This issue can also occur when Foglight is not able to identify your local host. Add your host/IP information to the etc/hosts files to correct this issue.

Configuring the Management Server with a link-local IPv6 address is not supported because many web browsers do not support link-local IPv6 addresses. To correct this issue, update your host/IP information in the etc/hosts file.