Re: [PLUG] Using mon to watch dns

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@purple.com>]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 10:16:30AM -0400, Jeff Weisberg wrote:
>   [46 lines, 268 words, 1646 characters]  Top characters: teaoni_s
> 
> 
> the other Jeff asked:
> 
> | I need to gather statistics on DNS reliability for a particular
> | host. (I think something's not my fault, I'd like data to clear my
> | name.) In particular, I want to query the MX server for this domain to
> | see how often it's available.
> 
> what do you mean by "query the MX server"? do you mean:
> 	
> 	ask a particular name server if it knows the MX for a domain
> 
> 	or check port 25 on a particular mail server?
> 
> 	something else?

I've set up an alias for a friend of mine so he can have a purple
email address. When people mail him using that alias, my mail server
often reports transient problems with dns lookups for his real
address. These are the "haven't delivered for four hours, will keep
trying for three days" messages that most ISP's just turn off.

I suspect that the problem is his company's MX servers or DNS servers
are flaky. He thinks my mail server is flaky. I don't have the option
of turning off the warnings, as I don't administer that machine.


> | I was thinking of using mon to collect the data, but I'm finding it a
> | bit hard to configure, despite having listened to Jim Trocki's mon
> | talk (I guess that was to phl.pm). As Jim pointed out, naming a
> | program after a name of the week makes google searches really hard.
> | 
> | Has anyone out there played with mon enough to help me get started? I
> | haven't found any examples of using mon for watching dns, it's not
> | totally clear to me from the mon docs, and even DNS itself is a bit
> | mysterious to me in its details.
> 
> 
> well, no, but I know how to do it (quite simple) in a different
> monitoring program. back when I ran an ISP, I developed my own
> monitoring software[1][2]. it can do both of the above (and other)
> tests quick easily.

Pretty cool, thanks. I'll take a closer look. It looks like this is
fast to set up for a sysadmin, a bit slower for an ad hoc
(non-)sysadmin.

The swag selection is impressive.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>
 GPG fingerprint: 1A1A BA95 D082 A558 A276  63C6 16BF 8C4C 0D1D AE4B

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