Frontman - at a glance

Frontman is a general-purpose monitoring proxy that performs checks on foreign hosts. The main goal is to check services and performs other checks, where no logon-rights are needed for. It's expected to be used in any kind of monitoring solutions, where agent-less checks must be executed over the network. Frontman is a robust check executor that can work in the background of any monitoring solution. It enables developers to build custom solutions. Frontman can be controlled by local Json files or via Json-based HTTP APIs.

Credits

Project co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund under the Innovative Economy Operational Programme. Innovation grants. We invest in your future.

What kind of checks frontman can perform

• ICMP ping
• TCP/UDP – check connection on port
• TCP/UDP – service check (check the connection and the common output pattern)
  • HTTP(S)
  • FTP(S)
  • FTP(S)
  • SMTP(S)
  • POP3(S)
  • SSH
  • NNTP
  • LDAP
  • SIP
  • IAX2
• SSL – check the certificate validity and expiration date
• HTTP web checks
  • Check status
  • Match raw HTML pattern
  • Match extracted text patter

Run the example

./frontman -i src/github.com/cloudradar-monitoring/frontman/example.json -o result.out

Use ctrl-c to stop it

Command line Usage

Usage of frontman:
  -c  config file path (default depends on OS)
  -d  daemonize – run the process in background
  -i  JSON file to read the list (required if no hub_url specified in the config)
  -o  file to write the results (default ./results.out)
  -r  one run only – perform checks once and exit. Overwrites output file
  -s  username to install and start the system service
  -u  stop and uninstall the system service
  -p  print the active config
  -v  log level – overrides the level in config file (values "error","info","debug") (default "error")
  -version  show the frontman version

Configuration

On first run frontman will automatically create the config file and fill it with the default value.

Default config locations:

• Mac OS: ~/.frontman/frontman.conf
• Windows: ./frontman.conf
• UNIX: /etc/frontman/frontman.conf

If some of the fields are missing in the config frontman will use the defaults. To print the active config you can use frontman -p

Also you may want to check the example config that contains comments on each field.

Logs location

• Mac OS: ~/.frontman/frontman.log
• Windows: ./frontman.log
• UNIX: /etc/frontman/frontman.conf

How to build from sources

• Install Golang 1.9 or newer

go get -d -u github.com/cloudradar-monitoring/frontman
go build -o frontman -ldflags="-X main.version=$(git --git-dir=src/github.com/cloudradar-monitoring/frontman/.git describe --always --long --dirty --tag)" github.com/cloudradar-monitoring/frontman/cmd/frontman

Build binaries and deb/rpm packages

– Install goreleaser

make goreleaser-snapshot

Build MSI package

Should be done on Windows machine

• Download go-msi and put it in the C:\Program Files\go-msi
• Open command prompt(cmd.exe or powershell)
• Go to frontman directory cd path_to_directory
• Run make goreleaser-snapshot to build binaries
• Run build-win.bat

Versioning model

Frontman uses <major>.<minor>.<buildnumber> model for compatibility with a maximum number of package managers.

Starting from version 1.2.0 packages with even <minor> number are considered stable.

Running as a docker container

Check dockerhub for available images.

Passing credentials

Username and password need to be configured via environment variables. You can pass them using the -e flags. docker run -d -e FRONTMAN_HUB_USER=YOUR_USERNAME -e FRONTMAN_HUB_PASSWORD=YOUR_PASS cloudradario/frontman:1.0.7