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    Monitor wireless access points?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • H
      HCJ
      last edited by

      Hi,
      Is there a package or can pfsense run a script that will ping wireless access points / a list of ips. and email if one is down/not responding?
      Thanks,

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      • A
        almabes
        last edited by

        That's the function of the built in gateway monitor, but I wouldn't recommend trying to hack that into working.  It most likely would really screw something up.

        IPSentry is what I use at customer sites that have that kind of monitoring requirement.

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        • H
          HCJ
          last edited by

          thanks for you reply I didnt want to have to use another box to do it, thats why I thought about if something was inbuilt / addon for pfsense.

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          • A
            almabes
            last edited by

            At customer sites I use Open Mesh access points.  The cloud based mothership does the monitoring, reporting, and emailing for you…and it's included with the APs for free.

            But if you've already done the wireless deployment, that doesn't help.

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            • johnpozJ
              johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
              last edited by

              What AP did you setup.. Unifi for example has controller you run that can email you if any AP go down, etc.

              An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
              If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
              Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
              SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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              • H
                HCJ
                last edited by

                hi, these are budget linksys/cisco wap200 ones have around 50 installed.

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                • johnpozJ
                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                  last edited by

                  Oh man..  Ouch..

                  Vs monitoring those I would just put together a plan to put in a real system..  Those are only G…

                  Did you get them off ebay or something for a song.. Why would anyone deploy 50 of those??

                  If you really need to do it on your pfsense install, I would prob look to installing something like smokeping.. Pretty sure you could prob get that running.

                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                  • D
                    doktornotor Banned
                    last edited by

                    @johnpoz:

                    Those are only G… 
                    Did you get them off ebay or something for a song.. Why would anyone deploy 50 of those??

                    "Only G" would be kinda fine… except that the firmware is totally unusable crap. 50 of those? You must be mighty mad.

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                    • johnpozJ
                      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                      last edited by

                      Only G would be ok if they were bought long time ago, the wap200 are EOL anyway are they not?  Phone support looks like it ended in Nov 2013..  Time to change them for something somewhat current ;)

                      If he had them installed when they were current, why just now asking about monitoring them?

                      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                      • H
                        HCJ
                        last edited by

                        they work fine in place, they are already out and live. Been over a period of time. Just want something to monitor if they go down.

                        I'll take a look at smokeping.

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                        • johnpozJ
                          johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                          last edited by

                          there was bounty to have smokeping as a package

                          https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=67448.0

                          But doesn't look like it ever got any traction.

                          An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                          If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                          Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                          SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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                          • DerelictD
                            Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
                            last edited by

                            Run a nagios VM.  pfSense is a firewall not a network monitoring and alerting appliance.

                            Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
                            A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
                            DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
                            Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

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                            • H
                              HCJ
                              last edited by

                              I fully agree, but I'm not looking at it running every 5 minutes, once a day is enough for our needs. My idea behind it is that since it's pinging the gateway, I was hoping just to tap into that, but thats not an option. I may look at a php script and do it that way as I see a php package exists.

                              Its minimum overhead for pfsense to do a ping of 50 ip#s once a day.

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                              • H
                                HCJ
                                last edited by

                                @johnpoz:

                                there was bounty to have smokeping as a package

                                https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=67448.0

                                But doesn't look like it ever got any traction.

                                I found this article : http://www.routerperformance.net/howtos/how-to-install-smokeping-on-pfsense-2-2/

                                looks straight forward

                                How to install Smokeping on pfSense 2.2

                                Since there’s no available package for Smokeping available in pfSense, you have to install it via CLI/FreeBSD package system.
                                Here’s the way to go:

                                pkg install smokeping

                                The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
                                Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]: y

                                pkg install apache24

                                Add following to /etc/rc.conf.local:
                                smokeping_enable=”YES”
                                apache24_enable=”YES”

                                Then:

                                cd /usr/local/etc/rc.d/

                                mv apache24 apache24.sh

                                mv smokeping smokeping.sh

                                In /usr/local/etc/apache24/httpd.conf add/edit:
                                Listen 8080

                                <directory “="" usr="" local="" smokeping="" htdocs”="">Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
                                AllowOverride None
                                Require all granted</directory>
                                ScriptAlias /smokeping.fcgi /usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/smokeping.fcgi
                                Alias /smokeimg/ /usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/img/
                                Alias /img/ /usr/local/smokeping/htdocs/img/

                                AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .fcgi

                                LoadModule cgi_module libexec/apache24/mod_cgi.so

                                Finally install Postfix Forwarder via WebGUI.

                                Via CLI again:

                                ln -s /usr/local/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail

                                chmod 600 /usr/local/etc/smokeping/smokeping_secrets

                                Now there’s Apache and Smokeping installed and accessible via:

                                http://<ip>:8080/smokeping.fcgi

                                You have to add more hosts on the CLI .. have fun!</ip>

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                                • johnpozJ
                                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator
                                  last edited by

                                  yup looks exactly what you were after - let us know how it works out.

                                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                  SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

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