Table of Contents
Documentation
This is a wiki. Please contribute your thoughts and findings. To make an account, go to the #munin IRC channel on OFTC to request that the system allow you to create an account. This has to be done due to the amount of spam which results from allowing open account creation. Once you have an account, log in and find edit buttons on the bottom of each page. nz
Author Guidelines
- Common nomenclature - Please read this if you write documentation
- Example consistency - Please read this if you write documentation
Available Documentation
Installation
- Installation on various flavours of Linux
- Installation on MacOS X
- Installation of a munin node on Solaris
- How to enable TLS in Munin
- FAQ
Configuration
- Configuration of Munin master
- Configuration of Munin node
- Configuration of Munin node plugins
- munin-node-configure and munin-node-configure --snmp
- IPv6 support status and configuration
Sending Alerts
- Sending alerts from Munin - alerts can be sent by e-mail or to other software, such as Nagios for example.
- Contact Nagios via NSCA
Templates
- Customizing Munin HTML pages
- Munin can make graphs just in time (CGI-graphing)
- Notes on Munin page templates
Plugins
Munin plugins run on all the different nodes that Munin monitors and report back all kinds of different statistics that Munin can graph.
Each munin-node installation brings an initial set of plugins to your node. Depending on the purpose and equipment of the node, you may want to add further plugins to monitor special services or hardware.
Download Resources
Munin Exchange was the place to look for new plugins and contribute your own ones to the community, but the website does not work anymore. The contributed plugins are now on github: https://github.com/munin-monitoring/contrib/
Debian users can get install the package munin-plugins-extra.
We may integrate vetted plugins from the contrib repository into the main munin distribution. They shall have a good quality, fullfill the requirements for vetted plugins, and users shall get support from the plugin developers.
You can add your favorite plugin to the proposal list.
Handling And Writing Plugins
Plugins are fun to write because very little effort is needed and is awarded with a quite nice graph pretty quickly.
Y'know, I really liked writing Munin plugins - A retired sysadmin
There is a great emphasis on making it simple to write plugins for Munin. Please see HOWTO write plugins for a introduction.
- HOWTO write plugins
- HOWTO write wildcard plugins?
- HOWTO write SNMP plugins
- Debugging Munin plugins
- The FAQ also has some stuff about plugins
- Using SNMP plugins
- Writing Plugins in shell script
- multigraph plugins can generate multiple graphs to make some graphing more efficient and maintainable.
Reference Material On Plugins
- Requirements for vetted plugins
- The Concise guide to plugin authoring
- Reference of all attributes for the config plugin command
- Best practices for uniform and easily understood plugins
- Notes on field names - what's legal or not in what contexts
- Notes on the Munin install procedure and variable values supported
Notes On Future Plugins
Programs & Files
| Node | Program | munin-node, munin-node-configure, munin-run |
| Configuration | munin-node.conf, plugin-conf.d | |
| Master | Program | munin-cron, munin-update, munin-limits, munin-graph, munin-html? |
| Configuration | munin.conf |
Other
- Notes on the Munin palette
- Version numbers in Munin (based on a mailing list post)
- How to monitor Munin nodes on unreachable hosts
- Collected SNMP documentation index
- Munin man page
- Network protocol
- Config files
- Debugging Munin - a quick checklist when Munin does not seem to work.
- SNMP-plugin user guide
- HOWTO Monitor Windows
- Advanced SNMP Monitoring with RRDTool - a Sys Admin Magazine article about how to monitor more things with Unix' snmpd - if you don't want to install munin-node on a host. Not that we have SNMP plugins for this - yet ;-)
- HowTo run munin-node on OpenWRT
Needed Documentation
- SNMP-plugin user guide
- Writing SNMP plugins
- Munin for MRTG users
- Catalog of included plugins
- Catalog of contributed plugins with download buttons
- HOWTO make packages: How to build packages for RPM systems, Debian, AIX, Solaris, etc...
Books
General
Gabriele Pohl and Michael Renner have published an entire, thoroughly written book on Munin in German: Munin - Graphisches Netzwerk- und System-Monitoring (ISBN 978-3-937514-48-2), published by Open Source Press in cooperation with Linpro.
The TOC, in conjunction with Nikolai's and Jimmy's foreword, is available in PDF format, as is a sample chapter on the configuration of the Munin master which covers, among others
- the configuration of contacts,
- virtual hosts and plugins,
- how to write your own colour palette,
- how to generate Munin graphs using a CGI,
- how to protect your graphs using password.
Focused Guides
Bart ten Brinke has written a starter book dedicated mostly to plugin writing : Instant Munin Plugin Starter (ISBN 9781849696746), published by Packt Publishing.
The book covers :
- Configure a Munin master
- Set up a Munin node
- Install plugins
- Monitoring hardware
- Setting up the Munin master webserver
- Writing a plugin in Bash and Perl
- Finding plugins to monitor specifics in your network
Third Party Articles / Documents
- Installing a munin node on Solaris 10 x86 the right way
- Linux Journal: Munin—the Raven Reports
- How to monitor Bind with Munin
- Today's Munin tip: Splitting out a noisy graph from munin
- Today's Munin tip: Reading the future - How to perform prediction based on Munin data
- Munin - An in-depth tutorial about Munin: basic setup, alerting, templates, virtual nodes, usage with nagios, creating your own plugins...
- How-To: Monitoring a Server with Munin - with some Apache2 configuration thrown in.
- Step by Step Guide to install and configure Munin Monitoring system
- Monitoring Your Ubuntu Servers and Clients with Munin Simple installation Guide
- Debian Administration: Monitoring systems with munin
- Howto simple setup Munin on Debian Sarge/Etch - with 1 Server + 1 Client (German)
- Servermonitoring with Munin (German)
- HowtoForge article, installation on Debian Sarge
- How to Install and Setup Munin on SLES 10
- Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) Reference Policy for Munin
- SELinux policy for Munin
- A japanese article about installing Munin
- A short diary like entry recommending Munin for monitoring
- A helpful article about setting up the MySQL and Apache plugins
- A short howto on removing spikes (metric counter wraps) from the RRD data file
- Server Monitoring with munin And monit On Mandriva 2008.0
- Munin addon for IPCop
- Tuning RRD - tuning notes to make RRD go faster - this is for anyone that has Munin performance problems.
- Linux Magazine: Monitoring with Munin
- Yet another Debian / Ubuntu Install Guide
- Perl Template for easy plugin development
- How to configure MySQL plugins in RHEL/CentOS
- Improved Munin Graphs for MySQL
- making munin-graph take advantage of multiple cpus/cores
- Graphing Linux Disk I/O statistics with Munin
- PyMunin - Multigraph Munin Plugins in Python - Python Module for developing Munin Multigraph Monitoring Plugins. Multigraph Plugins for Apache Web Server, Apache Tomcat, APC PHP Cache, PHP FPM (Fast Process Manager), Asterisk, Lighttpd, FreeSWITCH, Memcached, MySQL Database, Nginx, NTP, PostgreSQL Database, CPU Utilization, Memory Utilization, Disk Usage, Disk I/O, Network Interfaces, Processes and Threads, etc.
