Fair enough, there are soup nazi aspects, though I've come to appreciate
them after I got past my initial surprise. Ports that are enabled but
unused being in alarm was the big one for me.

Also, it does not require reverse DNS, only forward. I suspect syslog
collection needs reverse DNS to match up with hosts but I don't use that...

There are good non-soup-nazi reasons to require hostnames as identifiers
instead of IPs, not the least of which is if you're using IPs now you make
IPv6 compatability a problem. I could go on about the many benefits of
hostname as device ID as opposed to IP or integer but I'm not trying to
sell anything  :)


On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:07 PM, Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote:

>   I stopped caring about Observium when someone said it wouldn’t monitor
> something by IP address, it required both forward and reverse DNS.  Even
> though Mike tried to defend that.  It’s “Soup Nazi” logic.  Everything else
> in the world accepts an IP address in place of a hostname, I suspect you
> have to write extra code to NOT do that.
>
>
>  *From:* Jon Auer <[email protected]>
> *Sent:* Saturday, April 04, 2015 5:52 PM
> *To:* Animal Farm <[email protected]>
> *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] What Adam Armstrong of Observium thinks of WISPS
>
>  Until I see evidence to the contrary (just did a svn up and no wisp gear
> has been removed...) I'm treating that entire exchange as the internet
> equivalent of some drunk (Smeg) walking up to you(Adam) in the bar and
> grabbing your arm and saying have your wife dance with me. You're like,
> that's her choice and she says no. Repeating as the night goes on.
> Eventually maybe you snap, say some unkind things because you want the
> drunk to get lost and he just isn't taking the hint.
>
> That wasn't the first IRC exchange between them and others. Adam's
> volatility is well known but in this case I believe he was sorely provoked.
> We've all experienced the client from hell. Thing is, maybe some of us are
> the client from hell.
>
> What happened in IRC after may help understand where he is coming from...
>  [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:18:33] While I completely
> understand that you're the author and shit, and what you say goes.
> period... wasn't that a bit of an overreaction?
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:18:56] BenA: you have no fucking
> idea
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:19:05] I don't, it's true.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:06] these people will not take
> no for an answer
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:07] they go on
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:08] and on
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:09] and on
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:10] and on
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:19:20] Couldn't you just, like, look
> away from the screen?
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:23] BUT MUH SUPPORT, MILLIONS
> OF USERS, PLZ
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:32] couldn't you?
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:19:38] Ask him if he wants to pay.
> if he doesn't, ignore?
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:19:46] *oh, they all say they
> want to pay*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:19:49] Ah.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:20:10] *but when they realise it
> costs more than $5...*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:20:15] Right.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:20:31] the wireless industry seems
> to be rammed full of overly entitled douches
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:20:48] whot hink it's totally
> justified that we support evey bit of shitty kit they have
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:20:51] fucking wireless vendors
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:00] every new MODEL they
> release has to come with an entirely new set of mibs
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:04] it's ridiculous
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:21:11] You're a victim of your own
> success.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:23] and none of these people
> will ever listen when you tell them
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:32] adn they just keep coming
> back and coming back
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:35] *he's asked here a few
> times*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:40] *and we've had these
> conversations on the mailing list*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:21:44] *and god knows what else*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:22:02] and you'd think
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:22:03] when someone says
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:22:07] "fuck off, it's not going
> to happen"
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:22:13] you'd realise that was,
> well, that
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:22:53] I guess he really sees the
> advantages of Observium, and is keen for you to have further market
> penetration... over your express wishes (-:
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:23:06] no, he's keen to have his
> own pet hardware supported
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:23:12] That too.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:23:21] we already support 4
> different families of cambium kit
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:23:28] but apparently that doesn't
> include the devices he has
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:23:44] and i'm sure if i checked,
> we'd only have like 2-3 users using cambium kit
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:24:52] You could spend a few dozen
> man months of eye-straining, back-breaking labour adding in some kind of
> horribly complex and fucked up extensible API for 3rd party MIBs, and then
> telling people they can add whatever the fuck support/devices they like,
> but there's no support for it.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:25:06] or not
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:25:14] Party-pooper.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <BenA> [09:25:39] And people said you were a
> nice guy.
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:25:46] rarely
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:25:55] and even more rarely in
> here \o/
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:26:49] *we have 3 cambium ptp400
> devices and 5 cambium ptp800 devices*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:27:00] *in our entire userbase*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:27:24] *1086 cambium canopy
> devices*
> [2015-04-04T01:39:59-0500] <@adama> [09:27:31] *but, ofc, he said they
> weren't important and not to bother with them*
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 7:46 AM, Mike Hammett <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>  I had got the impression that he didn't even want user contributions.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----
>> Mike Hammett
>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
>> http://www.ics-il.com
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From: *"Jon Auer" <[email protected]>
>> *To: *"Animal Farm" <[email protected]>
>> *Sent: *Saturday, April 4, 2015 2:59:53 AM
>> *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] What Adam Armstrong of Observium thinks of WISPS
>>
>> It's more than just OIDs, adding device support involves a fair amount of
>> fiddly little things. Finding/cropping icon, regex to match the OS/device
>> type to handle it correctly, logic to handle the device-specific things,
>> logic to work around whatever they broke in the MIB (remember when Cambium
>> returned strings instead of ints for some counters?). Then more testing.
>>
>> That's what makes Observium more useful out of the box than something
>> like Cacti where you're adding OIDs onesey twosey to device templates.
>>
>>  I think a big part of his reaction is, if you watch IRC, for the past
>> few months to years there have been people asking for WISP features and
>> pretty much nobody in a place to write code to do it. My guess is he is
>> time constrained and would rather work on other things (hence
>> non-responsiveness to offers of money) combined with not wanting to deal
>> with what could be perceived as self-entitled communication from some users.
>>
>> The hostile reaction to WISP gear:
>>  CMMMicro is a switch that doesn't even use the switch MIB -> Work done
>> to support WISP devices doesn't pay off in helping support other
>> Enterprise/Wireline devices.
>>
>> Cambium is extra special because they version the PMP MIB against OS rev
>> instead of starting out with a well-designed MIB as spec and fixing OS to
>> match. The easy way out is to ignore that and use the latest but what
>> happens when Cambium updates something? Bug reports from users on new OS
>> complaining that something doesn't work. You update and now there's bug
>> reports from the users that want to stay on old OS for a while. The hard
>> way? Handle every OS rev differently/code gardening responsibility? You
>> just can't win.
>>
>> <I digress>
>> So, WISP gear, he doesn't need it and doesn't care. I need it and care so
>> I write what I need. I may not  appreciate the politics of Observium but
>> I'm being pragmatic. I contributed what little Cambium PMP device support
>> there is in Observium currently and I have more devices I'd like to see
>> supported. If the time comes that my contributions are turned away I'll
>> look for another monitoring solution, not out of spite but because I need
>> to monitor all the things.
>>
>> There may come a time when I move to LibreNMS. They seem to have openness
>> & saying yes down but I want to see how they handle saying no to extraneous
>> things/feature creep beyond monitoring metrics (e.g. if it were me,
>> allow/keep rancid integration but just say no to generalized IPAM).
>> You can't please everyone and who/how they choose to please will be
>> insightful.
>> </I digress>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 5:06 PM, Mike Hammett <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>>  Do we know why Adam blows up whenever people specify OIDs they want to
>>> track? I've never bothered to figure it out myself. He made it seem like
>>> hte OID was such a small part of everything that needed to be done.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----
>>> Mike Hammett
>>> Intelligent Computing Solutions
>>> http://www.ics-il.com
>>>
>>> ------------------------------
>>>  *From: *"Neil Lathwood" <[email protected]>
>>> *To: *[email protected]
>>> *Sent: *Tuesday, March 31, 2015 1:08:23 PM
>>> *Subject: *Re: [AFMUG] What Adam Armstrong of Observium thinks of WISPS
>>>
>>>  On 31 March 2015 at 19:04, WaveDirect <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yeah you should accept at least equipment donations :)  Some of us may
>>>> have spares we can part with and after you are done sell them to help buy
>>>> other products you want to support.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The donation of equipment is a huge ++++. It wouldn't be necessary to
>>> send the kit anywhere just provide snmp access, that way we can see what
>>> data is available and work on adding support.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> Neil
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>

Reply via email to