Troubleshoot the Rackspace Monitoring Agent

This article describes situations related to the Rackspace Monitoring Agent and provides actions that you can perform to resolve them. Issues with the monitoring agent are typically related to the agent ID, which is the unique identifier that detects the agent. This identifier is unique for each account and is commonly typified as the ID of the cloud instance, but it can be a unique string.

Error: The Rackspace Monitoring Agent is not connected to my server

This issue might have one of the following causes:

Your aerver does not have the Rackspace Monitoring agent installed. For installation instructions, see Install and configure the Rackspace Monitoring Agent.
The agent is installed but not connected to your server. For the agent to work correctly, you must associate it with your server by using a Rackspace Monitoring entity. The entity is a representation of your server in the monitoring system.
The agent is installed but not started or not configured to start automatically during startup.
The agent is unable to determine the appropriate entity because there are duplicate entities associated with your account.
Connectivity issues or firewall problems exist.

Check the agent is installed and associated with your server

Check the agent installation for the following operating systems:

Linux®

Verify that you installed the Rackspace monitoring agent under /usr/bin/rackspace-monitoring-agent.
Verify that the /etc/rackspace-monitoring-agent.cfg file exists and contains a valid agent token.

Check for errors and status information in the /var/log/rackspace-monitoring-agent.log file:

$ less /var/log/rackspace-monitoring-agent.log

Look for errors, similar to the following excerpt from a log file that demonstrates a
connection timeout failure:

"Fri Feb 19 10:02:47 PM 2016 **ERR: Connection**:
agent-endpoint-lon.monitoring.api.rackspacecloud.com:443
(agent-endpoint-lon.monitoring.api.rackspacecloud.com:443) -> **ETIMEDOUT**"

Run the following command to verify that the agent is running:

$ ps aux | grep rackspace-monitoring-agent

$ service rackspace-monitoring-agent status

Start the service if that status indicates that it is not running:

$ service rackspace-monitoring-agent start

Make sure that you have firewall rules that allow IPv6 communication. If you have IPv6 disabled, ensure that the firewall allows agent communication.

Windows®

Verify that the Rackspace monitoring agent exists under C:\Program Files\Rackspace Monitoring\rackspace-monitoring-agent.exe.

Note: If you use a 32-bit version on a 64-bit Windows computer, you can find the
monitoring agent installed under C:\Program Files (x86)\Rackspace Monitoring\rackspace-monitoring-agent.exe.
Verify that the
C:\ProgramData\Rackspace Monitoring\config\rackspace-monitoring-agent.cfg
file exists and contains a valid agent token.
Check for errors and status information in the C:\ProgramData\Rackspace Monitoring\log.txt file.
Verify that the monitoring agent is running by opening the Task Manager, clicking the Services tab, and locating the Rackspace Monitoring agent service.
Make sure that you have firewall rules that allow IPv6 communication. If you have IPv6 disabled, ensure that the firewall is permitting the agent to communicate.

Check for duplicate entities

Check for duplicate entities by using the following methods:

Use Raxmon to check for duplicate entities

You can use the Rackspace Monitoring command line interface (raxmon) to troubleshoot your monitoring agent. To install the raxmon tool, read Getting Started with Rackspace Monitoring CLI.

To troubleshoot a monitoring agent by using raxmon, complete the following steps:

Create a config file in the following location: ~/.raxrc

Populate the configuration file with the following content:

[credentials]

username=ACCOUNT_USERNAME

api_key=ACCOUNT_APIKEY

[api]

url=https://monitoring.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0

[auth_api]

url=https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0

[ssl]

verify=true

Note: ACCOUNT_USERNAME and ACCOUNT_APIKEY are the Rackspace Cloud account username and your API key.

Type the following at a command-line interface:
```
raxmon-entities-list
```

Examine the output to see if it has two entities, as shown in the following example:

Entity: id=enRDIKf7zG label=Krisna provider=Rackspace Monitoring...
Entity: id=enhqYnVEnc label=krisna provider=Rackspace Monitoring...

If your output has two entities with different label cases (upper and lower case), open a Support ticket.
After Support has fixed the problem with duplicate entities, restart the monitoring agent so that the changes can take full effect.

Use cURL to check for duplicate entities

To check for duplicate entities by using cURL, do the following:

Authenticate against the Rackspace Cloud API by issuing the following command at a command-line interface:

curl -s https://identity.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0/tokens -X 'POST'
    -d '{"auth":{"RAX-KSKEY:apiKeyCredentials":{"username":"yourUserName", "apiKey":"yourApiKey"}}}'
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" | python -m json.tool

After a successful authentication, make sure to write down the authentication token.

Issue the following command to obtain a list of entities:
```
curl -i -X GET <br>
   -H 'X-Auth-Token: '$token''<br>
   -H 'Content-Type: application/json' <br>
   -H 'Accept: application/json' <br>
   'https://monitoring.api.rackspacecloud.com/v1.0/$accountid/entities'
```
Note:Make sure to replace the $token placeholder with the authentication token
you have obtained during authentication and the $accountid placeholder with your Rackspace Cloud account ID.

If the call is successful, you see a list of entities and their corresponding metadata as shown in the following example:

    "values": [
         {
            "id": "en5wmQxCsz",
            "label": "test1",
            "ip_addresses": {
                   "access_ip0_v6": "2001:4800:7818:0103:be76:4eff:fe04:d3b6",
                   "access_ip1_v4": "104.130.141.220"
            },
             "metadata": null,
             "managed": false,
             "uri": "https://dfw.servers.api.rackspacecloud.com/1234567/servers/1b62e690-7745-4bbf-9ee8-7fcd361db227",
             "agent_id": "1b62e690-7745-4bbf-9ee8-7fcd361db227",
             "active_suppressions": [],
             "scheduled_suppressions": [],
             "created_at": 1416625774775,
             "updated_at": 1416625774775
           },
           {
              "id": "enInNqsafG",
              "label": "test2",
              "ip_addresses": {
                     "public0_v4": "104.130.240.201",
                     "private0_v4": "10.209.65.2",
           },
              "metadata": null,
              "managed": false,
              "uri": "https://dfw.servers.api.rackspacecloud.com/1234567/servers/880d31fb-06e7-456f-b849-aa35044d4a9b",
              "agent_id": "880d31fb-06e7-456f-b849-aa35044d4a9b",
              "active_suppressions": [],
              "scheduled_suppressions": [],
              "created_at": 1424970771920,
              "updated_at": 1424970771920
          },

Examine the output and check whether there are duplicate entities with varying label cases. If duplicate entities exist, open a Support ticket.

Manually configure the Rackspace Monitoring agent to function behind an HTTPS proxy

If you need to connect the agent through an HTTP proxy, you can manually configure the Rackspace Monitoring agent to function behind an HTTP's proxy by setting the monitoring_proxy_url parameter in the agent configuration file.

For information about configuring the monitoring agent by using the agent configuration file, see Configure the agent manually.
For information about the agent configuration file, see Agent configuration file.

Related information

About the Rackspace Monitoring Agent.