OrbVis — a NagVis successor candidate (developer preview, feedback welcome)

Checkmk Dev&Exchange Community Project Announcements
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Hi everyone,

we’d like to introduce OrbVis, a fresh take on monitoring visualization for Checkmk. OrbVis is a candidate for replacing NagVis in the Checkmk world, endorsed by Checkmk — but to be clear up front: this is a developer hobby project. No official support, no SLA, no release timeline. The code is open and we want you to try it.

See it live, no install needed

A read-only guest is parked on https://play.checkmk.com with a few example boards. Just click around — no credentials required.

cmk-home
cmk-home1440×900 126 KB

What is OrbVis?

A modern web rewrite of “draw your infrastructure on a map and see live status”:

  • Backend: Python 3.12 / FastAPI / async SQLAlchemy / async Livestatus
  • Frontend: Vue 3 + TypeScript / Vite / Pinia / Tailwind / D3
  • Boards: static, worldmap, radar, flow — JSON-stored, WebSocket-pushed

cmk-board-static
cmk-board-static1440×900 130 KB

cmk-board-geo
cmk-board-geo1440×900 506 KB

cmk-board-flow
cmk-board-flow1440×900 66.2 KB

cmk-board-radar
cmk-board-radar1440×900 46.4 KB

  • Auth: OMD session SSO inside a site, htpasswd-compatible local users, JWT
  • Multi-site Livestatus (Unix or TCP), AuthUser filtering for contact-group visibility
  • NagVis import via GUI andtools/cfg_importer.py --batch
  • Full feature list and screenshots in the README

Checkmk integration

Tested informally on 2.3 / 2.4 / 2.5 / 2.6. The intended supported range going forward is 2.5 and up. When deployed into a site it lives at https://<host>/<site>/orbvis/ and re-uses the site’s Apache + OMD session cookie (login to Checkmk = login to OrbVis).

After installing the MKP, OrbVis registers a main-menu entry in Checkmk and ships an optional sidebar snapin that lists your boards — both feel native to the Checkmk GUI and respect the user’s permissions.

cmk-mainmenu

NagVis migration

OrbVis can import existing NagVis maps directly via the web UI — open the board overview, hit Import, drop in a .cfg file, done. No shell access required. For bulk migrations there is also a CLI helper (tools/cfg_importer.py --batch) that walks a whole etc/nagvis/maps/ directory.

The importer covers the common cases — hosts, services, host-/servicegroups, lines (incl. weathermap coloring), shapes/images, textboxes, and the stock speedometer/bar gadgets. Custom hover/context templates, container objects, custom PHP gadgets and geomap are not migrated yet. Icons and background images still need to be copied across by hand.

If you have NagVis configs in production, please try the importer and tell us where it falls short — that’s the feedback that will move the project forward fastest.

nagvis_map
nagvis_map1781×1287 60.7 KB

orbivs_import
orbivs_import1781×1287 103 KB

Try it on your own infrastructure

The MKP is the primary install path (one Checkmk-major-specific MKP per release, .deb/.rpm and Docker are also available). Pre-built artefacts live on the Releases page; the install matrix is in docs/install.md.

For Checkmk 2.5 you can also download the latest release on the Checkmk Exchange:

What we’d love feedback on

  • Does the NagVis import cover your maps?
  • Does OMD SSO work cleanly on your setup?
  • Is the board editor good enough to replace your NagVis workflow?

Repo / issues: https://github.com/makanakoeln/orbvis
Checkmk Exchange (2.5 only): Checkmk Exchange
Discussion: please reply in this thread
Open issues: Issues · makanakoeln/orbvis · GitHub
Fixed issues (on next mkp release): Issues · makanakoeln/orbvis · GitHub

19 Likes
Cannot modify lines in Nagvis
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Regarding the name, I’d like to point out that there are already two other unrelated projects, named OrbVis, which might cause confusion and probably should be re-named.

wojciech-graj/OrbVis: Realtime Satellite Orbit Visualizer

staradutt/orbvis: OrbVis is a lightweight Python package for plotting orbital-projected bandstructure and density of states(DOS) from vasp output files (PROCAR & DOSCAR).

Kind regards, Dirk.

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Thanks for pointing this out, Dirk.

OrbVis is currently a private working project — it’s not published on PyPI, npm or any similar registry, so there’s no package-name collision with either the satellite-orbit visualizer or the VASP plotting tool.
Given how different those domains are from monitoring visualisation, confusion in practice should be minimal.

Should this ever be integrated into Checkmk upstream, the name would most likely be reassigned at that point — until then “OrbVis” stays as the working title.

I’ve added a short note to the README acknowledging both projects.

2 Likes
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Nice! :+1:

Got it running in minutes and after half an hour or so most things seems to work properly. Pretty intuitive, too.

Only exceptions till now: Added custom images don’t show up and an imported NagVis Automap doesn’t show any objects (not sure if Automap import should be possible at all).

Looking forward to hearing more from this!

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Thanks, Mirco, for the first feedback :slight_smile:

Would need more details.
I can upload a custom icon and it shows up (static board)

Think this just a small bug in the importer. Would be imported as Flow Board.
Will create an issue for this :white_check_mark:

In general, feel free to open an issue/feature request on Issues · makanakoeln/orbvis · GitHub .
If not possible, i will do it. Just to keep track of bugs and missing features.

1 Like
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Ah - my fault!

After uploading an image I just clicked on “Place on board” - and have overseen that the uploaded image becomes part of the default icon list and has to be selected. Therefore I got just some placeholders.

Everything’s working now, thanks!

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MKP for 2.5 is now also available on the Checkmk Exchange:

2 Likes