OpenNMS On the Horizon – November 22nd, 2021

Since last time, we worked on migrating configs to the database, documentation improvements, the Twin API, SNMP metadata, Maven, the Zabbix adapter, alarms in Sentinel, JAXB processing, Karaf, Collectd, Alarmd and ALEC collections, the Vue geomap, and the new FeatherDS UI.

Github Project Updates

Internals, APIs, and Documentation

• Dmitri, Pushkar, Shankar, and Upendra worked on loading JMX, notification, Trapd, VMware, WMI, and XMP configurations into the database.
• Mark and Ronny worked on some documentation updates and improvements, including building OpenNMS from source and Kafka producer config.
• Chandra fixed some issues in Twin API communication found in Horizon 29.
• Dustin finished adding some retry logic to the Twin API.
• I fixed a bug in the snmp-metadata-adapter-configuration.xml processing so that it would accept multiple <config> blocks.
• Jesse did some work classifying our Maven build structure.
• I worked on improving some smoke test flappers.
• Yang Li did some more work on the Zabbix adapter.
• Mark Bordelon did more work on alarm-processing support in Sentinel.
• Patrick did more work on using the new config management API for handling Karaf config.
• Christian enhanced hardware discovery events to include some extra metadata metadata.
• Freddy worked on converting some JAXB code to use EclipseLink rather than MOXY.
• Stefan did some more work on Karaf bundle refresh.
• I fixed some non-root bugs found in Horizon 29.0.0.
• Yang Li worked on some threading improvements to Collectd.
• Marcel worked on refactoring some reporting and topology provider docs.
• Chandra worked on adding tracing to the Twin API.
• Dino added some new collections and graphs for Alarmd and ALEC.
• Bonnie worked on migrating some ResourceType documentation from the wiki to the docs.

Web, ReST, UI, and Helm

• Jane worked on layout updates to the new Vue-based geomap.
• Mike and Jesse continued to work on file editing in the new UI.
• Tripti did more work on the new provisioning config UI and updating some code to use FeatherDS.
• Jane and Farid worked on alarm coloring in the Vue geomap.

Contributors

Thanks to the following contributors for committing changes since last OOH:

• Benjamin Reed
• Bonnie Robinson
• Chandra Gorantla
• Christian Pape
• Dino Yancey
• Dmitri Herdt
• Dustin Frisch
• Freddy Chu
• Jane Hou
• Jerry Beuree
• Jesse White
• Marcel Fuhrmann
• Mark Bordelon
• Mark Mahacek
• Mike Rose
• Patrick Schweizer
• Pushkar Suthar
• Ronny Trommer
• Shankar Suman
• Stefan Wachter
• Tikayat Mohanta
• Tripti Bansal
• Upendra Guggilam
• Yang Li

The Wiki is Dead, Long Live the (Discourse) Wiki

As many of you know, the OpenNMS wiki has long been a bit of a mess.

A bunch of folks have been doing the hard work of migrating the useful bits to the Discourse.

At this point, the value of keeping the wiki around is lower than the value of closing it down, so we are going to finally do just that, on December 1st.

We'll keep an internal copy around in case we need to migrate anything else that got missed, so if you can think of something specific that really needs moving over, let us know.

The new location for general (non-versioned) configuration tips and other useful stuff in the Knowledge Base category of the OpenNMS Discourse.

Knowledge Base.

Discourse.

Tell your friends.

Release Roadmap

Completed Off-schedule Release: Horizon 29.0.1

Horizon 29.0.1 is a quick release outside of the normal schedule to address some bugs found in 29.0.0 mostly related to running as non-root, and Minion communication.

For a high-level overview of what has changed in Horizon 29, see What’s New in OpenNMS Horizon 29.

The codename for Horizon 29.0.1 is Emu.

Bug

• Kafka topics should start with OpenNMS Instance ID for Twin (Issue NMS-13733)
• opennms.spec file tries to find out if gid 1000 is used but doesn’t actually check hat (Issue NMS-13734)
• Events from Hardware Inventory Provisioning Adapter and SNMP Metadata Provisioning Adapter cannot be distinguished (Issue NMS-13735)
• Upgrade to 29: fix-permissions script fails changing ownership (Issue NMS-13736)
• Minion user not authorized to read from topic OpenNMS.Twin.Sink (Issue NMS-13742)
• opennms-plugin-provisioning-wsman-asset missing on Debian (Issue NMS-13747)
• Upgrade to 29: "$RUNAS is not set" (Issue NMS-13748)
• SNMP Metadata XSD does not allow multiple elements (Issue NMS-13752)

Enhancement

• Support multiple auth params for same SNMPV3 username (Issue NMS-13490)
• Add retry for RPC calls (Issue NMS-13652)
• Migrate Discovery settings from wiki into docs (Issue NMS-13730)

Upcoming December Releases

OpenNMS is on a monthly release schedule, with releases happening on the second Wednesday of the month.

The next OpenNMS release day is December 8th, 2021.

We currently expect a minor update to Horizon 29.

Next Horizon: 30 (Q2 2022)

The next major Horizon release will be Horizon 30.

Horizon 30 is currently expected to have the following features:

• the start of a new Vue-based UI using the Feather Design System
• thresholding support for Flow data
• support for running OIA plugins on Minion and Sentinel
• support for backing up router configuration files

Next Meridian: 2022 (Q1 2022)

The current expectation is that we will release Meridian 2022 in Q1 of next year. It will be based on Horizon 29 plus any bug fixes that happen between November and the Meridian release.

Disclaimer

Note that this is just based on current plans; dates, features, and releases can change or slip depending on how development goes.

The statements contained herein may contain certain forward-looking statements relating to The OpenNMS Group that are based on the beliefs of the Group’s management as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to the Group’s management. These forward-looking statements are, by their nature, subject to significant risks and uncertainties.

...We apologize for the excessive disclaimers. Those responsible have been sacked.

Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretti nasti...

We apologise again for the fault in the disclaimers. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

Until Next Time…

If there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future OOH, or you just have a comment or criticism you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.

• Ben

Resolved Issues Since Last OOH

• NMS-10536: Add a breaking change entry for telemetryd-configuration in the release notes
• NMS-11769: Scheduled Weekly Outages Missing 'Day of the Week'
• NMS-12111: Event and alarm templates fail with Elasticsearch 7.X
• NMS-13419: CI: Don't publish artifacts until smoke tests have passed
• NMS-13490: Support multiple auth params for same SNMPV3 username
• NMS-13733: Kafka topics should start with OpenNMS Instance ID for Twin
• NMS-13735: Events from Hardware Inventory Provisioning Adapter and SNMP Metadata Provisioning Adapter cannot be distinguished
• NMS-13747: opennms-plugin-provisioning-wsman-asset missing on Debian
• NMS-13748: Upgrade to 29: "$RUNAS is not set"
• NMS-13752: SNMP Metadata XSD does not allow multiple <config> elements