Monarch and Childsplay

Monarch is another Nagios configuration tool like Fruity which I tried earlier. They're both written by Groundworks OpenSource, although Fruity appears to have stalled in development. In a nutshell it has a more powerful web interface, but also has more prerequisites in setup.

While Fruity required only Mysql and PHP, Monarch requires MySQL and lots of perl modules. The package comes as a .tgz(tested with 2.0.2), which includes an install script and a README.TXT file, which is fairly easy to follow. The only thing I did differently, is instead of using cpan as the README suggests, I installed the perl module Debian packages using apt-get. Here's the list of what it needed:

sudo apt-get install libcgi-session-perl libclass-accessor-perl libcgi-ajax-perl libxml-sax-perl libxml-libxml-common-perl libdbi-perl libdbd-mysql-perl libxml-libxml-perl libarchive-tar-perl

The install script, asks you several questions, many of which can later be altered on the web interface. After installation, it's easy to import your nagios configuration, simply by going to
Control->Main Nagios Configuration->Load from file and then to
Control->Load

The "load" dumps the database, and reloads it with the new data. This is a bit clunky, as they could've done it with version control, a new set of tables, or perhaps given the option to create a new database, but easily roll back to the previous one.

The interface is fairly easy to follow, and you can drill down from a hostgroup to hosts, and then their related services. The nice thing about all the levels in the tree is the pre-populated menus. For example when looking at services for a host, you can easily add a new service just by choosing it from the list. On the other hand, I didn't like the "copy" function the way it was implemented.

The export is a bit dissapointing in that it's not flexible enough. Much like Fruity, it will take a nicely laid out conf.d directory(and any subdirectories) and squish it into a single fileset. Also it still requires work

Conclusion: If you want a nice tool to get a better overview of your existing Nagios configuration(or if you're starting with a fresh configuration), and you'd rather click than edit config files, then Monarch is a nice tool.

Childsplay is a nice set of educational games for young children(ages 2-11). It features sound and number identification games, memory card games,easy picture puzzles, and for the older ones, typing, spelling and math.

One of the first things I really liked about Childsplay is that it starts out as full screen, so kids can't accidentally click outside the window and lose their game. The interface is easy and graphical and the icons and games are colorful and fun. And everything has audio feedback. My 22 month old thoroughly enjoyed it to her full attention span(about 10minutes). Highly recommended.

-T