About NetSaint

What Is NetSaint?

NetSaint is a network monitoring application. It is designed to run under Linux, although it should work under most other unices as well. Some of its features include:

Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.)
Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks
Parallelized service checks
Ability to define network host hierarchy using "parent" hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method)
Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
Automatic log file rotation
Support for implementing redundant monitoring hosts
Optional web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc.

NetSaint is not...

Designed to run under NT - it never has been and never will be.
An SNMP manager. If that's what you need, look elsewhere.

System Requirements

The only requirement of running NetSaint is a machine running Linux (or UNIX variant) and a C compiler. You will probably also want to have TCP/IP configured, as most service checks will be performed over the network.

You are not required to use the CGIs included with the core NetSaint distribution. However, if you do decide to use them, you will need to have the following software installed...

A web server (preferrably Apache)
Thomas Boutell's gd library version 1.6.3 or higher (required by the statusmap CGI)

Licensing

NetSaint is free software and may be used, copied, modified, etc. in accordance with the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. Information on the GPL license and open source software model can be found at www.opensource.org

History

Version 0.0.6b3 - 07/09/2000
Version 0.0.5 - 04/26/2000
Version 0.0.4 - 09/02/1999
Version 0.0.3 - 05/21/1999
Version 0.0.2p1 - 04/18/1999
Version 0.0.2 - 04/10/1999
Version 0.0.1 - 03/14/1999

Known Issues

NetSaint is still an immature program, so there are bound to be a lot of bugs in it. The current list of known issues and bugs can be found at http://www.netsaint.org/bugs.html

Acknowledgements

Several people have contributed to NetSaint by either reporting bugs, suggesting improvements, writing plugins, etc. A list of some of the many contributors to the development of NetSaint can be found at http://www.netsaint.org/contributors.html. Unfortunately, this list is quite of of date. I've been getting so many bug reports, patches, suggestions, plugins, etc. that I can't keep up...

Comments And Feedback

I developed NetSaint for my own use. Once I was reasonably happy with it, I decided to release it so that others could use it. NetSaint is free software, so I don't get any compensation for the hours I spend working on it. In order to keep more versions coming, all I ask is that you give me some feedback. I need to know what doesn't work in the current version and what you want to see in future releases. Positive feedback is appreciated, as it helps assure me that NetSaint is actually being used and is working for people. You can reach me at netsaint@netsaint.org

Downloading The Latest Version

You can check for new versions of NetSaint at the following sites:

http://www.netsaint.org
http://www.freshmeat.net (appindex 923738250)

Other Monitoring Utilities

In case you weren't aware, there are other network monitoring utilities available besides NetSaint. I think NetSaint is a pretty good contender, but I'm obviously biased... Have a look at the competition for yourself - here are links to a few of them: