Monitor wireless access points?

[HCJ]

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,

[almabes]

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.

[HCJ]

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.

[almabes]

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.

[johnpoz]

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

[HCJ]

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

[johnpoz]

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.

[doktornotor]

@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.

[johnpoz]

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?

[HCJ]

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.

[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.

[Derelict]

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

[HCJ]

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.

[HCJ]

@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>

[johnpoz]

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