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Monitoring an MDQ Server

The Shibboleth IdP V3 software has reached its End of Life and is no longer supported. This documentation is available for historical purposes only. See the IDP4 wiki space for current documentation on the supported version.

Monitoring an MDQ Server

Owned by trscavo@ncsa.illinois.edu
Last updated: Apr 12, 2018

This document shows how to use a library of bash scripts to monitor a metadata query (MDQ) server.

Getting Started

  1. Skim some related documentation on GitHub: Monitoring an HTTP Resource

  2. Install the bash library (see the bash library project page for details)

  3. Configure the bash environment (see the bash library project page for details)

Testing a Single Entity

Experiment 1: Given an IdP entityID, test a single metadata resource on the MDQ server.

Required info:

  1. An IdP entityID

  2. An MDQ base URL

An MDQ base URL is needed to configure a Shibboleth DynamicHTTPMetadataProvider as well.

The following values are for illustration only:

Initialize parameters
$ entityID=https://webauth.umass.edu/idp/shibboleth
$ mdq_base_url=http://mdq-beta.incommon.org/global

Compute the corresponding MDQ protocol request URL:

Compute the MDQ protocol URL
$ location=$( $BIN_DIR/mdq_url.bash $mdq_base_url $entityID )
$ echo $location
http://mdq-beta.incommon.org/global/entities/https%3A%2F%2Fwebauth.umass.edu%2Fidp%2Fshibboleth

Test the MDQ server by requesting entity metadata:

Run the test
$ $BIN_DIR/http_response_stats.bash -n 1 $location

The previous command outputs the following JSON file on stdout:

Default output 
[
 {
   "requestInstant": "2018-04-12T21:20:52Z"
   ,
   "friendlyDate": "April 12, 2018"
   ,
   "curlExitCode": "0"
   ,
   "responseCode": "200"
   ,
   "sizeDownload": 9160
   ,
   "speedDownload": 42670.000
   ,
   "timeTotal": 0.214669
 }
]

Limit the size of the JSON array to one object but output all available timing data:

Run the test again
$ $BIN_DIR/http_response_stats.bash -n 1 -a $location

The previous command outputs the following JSON file on stdout:

All output 
[
 {
   "requestInstant": "2018-04-12T21:24:06Z"
   ,
   "friendlyDate": "April 12, 2018"
   ,
   "curlExitCode": "0"
   ,
   "responseCode": "200"
   ,
   "sizeDownload": 9160
   ,
   "speedDownload": 93969.000
   ,
   "timeNamelookup": 0.005276
   ,
   "timeConnect": 0.050664
   ,
   "timeAppconnect": 0.000000
   ,
   "timePretransfer": 0.050761
   ,
   "timeStarttransfer": 0.096721
   ,
   "timeTotal": 0.097478
 }
]

For more information, consult the script’s inline help message:

Display help message
$ $BIN_DIR/http_response_stats.bash -h

Monitoring the MDQ Server

Set up a cron job for the previous test.

Cron job 
#!/bin/bash
#######################################################################
#
# This script is intended to be used as a cron job.
#
# Configure the following environment variables:
# (also export TMPDIR if it doesn’t already exist)
#
# export BIN_DIR="/path/to/bin/"
# export LIB_DIR="/path/to/lib/"
# export CACHE_DIR="/path/to/http_cache/"
# export LOG_FILE="/path/to/bash_log.txt"
#
# Configure the following local variables:
#
# entityID=
# mdq_base_url=
# out_dir=
#
#######################################################################

# the name of this script
script_name=${0##*/}

# determine the HTTP location
location=$( $BIN_DIR/mdq_url.bash $mdq_base_url $entityID )
status_code=$?
if [ $status_code -ne 0 ]; then
	echo "ERROR: $script_name: unable to compute location" >&2
	exit 2
fi

# adjust the command line with options -n and -a as desired
$BIN_DIR/http_response_stats.bash -d $out_dir $location
status_code=$?
if [ $status_code -ne 0 ]; then
	echo "ERROR: $script_name: unable to monitor location: $location" >&2
	exit 3
fi

exit 0



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