[Release] Checkmk beta release 2.2.0b1

Dear friends of Checkmk,

the new beta release 2.2.0b1 of Checkmk is ready for download.

We are excited to start the beta phase of Checkmk 2.2 and of the new Checkmk Cloud Edition. After six weeks of internal alpha testing, we are confident enough in the current stability to progress to public beta.

Testing the new Checkmk Cloud Edition
The Checkmk Cloud Edition requires activation with a valid license. To try the Checkmk Cloud Edition, please set up a new site for the time being, and use the 30 day trial period.

Please do not migrate any production workloads to the new Checkmk Cloud Edition during the beta, as you will only be able to acquire a license once Checkmk 2.2 reaches General Availability (GA). Further details and documentation of the new license management will follow ahead of GA.

Changes to the Free Edition and Trial
The Checkmk Free Edition and the trial are being continued as part of the Checkmk Cloud Edition from Checkmk 2.2.0 on. The Checkmk Cloud Edition includes a 30-day free trial and includes a free tier for up to 750 services.

Feedback
We would like to ask all users to try out the new version and help us ensure
that Checkmk 2.2 becomes a success.

Please send general feedback and bug reports to this dedicated mail address:

feedback-2.2-beta at checkmk.com

All mails to this address will be used to improve the 2.2 and are of course completely free of charge.

This test release ships with 1138 changes affecting all editions of Checkmk,
180 changes for the Enterprise editions, 7 Cloud Edition specific and
12 Managed Services Edition specific changes.

Support periods can be found here: Checkmk versions

Changes in the Checkmk Enterprise Edition:

Agent bakery:

  • 14647 Agent Bakery: Configure generic agents for any folderā€¦
  • 13680 Agent Bakery: Make package compression optionalā€¦
  • 13681 Agent Bakery: Target platform selectionā€¦
  • 15064 Agent updater checks for certificate validityā€¦
  • 13135 fileinfo: Make agent rule available for Solaris and AIX
  • 13678 super_server: Add rule to deactivate Solaris network serviceā€¦
  • 14648 Pre 2.0 bakery plugins are no longer supportedā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14916 SEC: Do not log host secretā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14919 SEC: Do not log host secret (2)ā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 15068 SEC: Fix improper certificate validation in agent updaterā€¦
  • 14550 FIX: mk_logwatch via bakery: Add APPEND option for message classificationā€¦
  • 14735 FIX: Agent Bakery: Cleanup orphaned packagesā€¦
  • 13684 FIX: Agent Bakery: Minimize time locking the Checkmk configurationā€¦
  • 14736 FIX: Agent Bakery: Show correct signed status if not baking for all platformsā€¦
  • 15418 FIX: Agent bakery: Provide AIX tar.gz package in USTAR formatā€¦
  • 13854 FIX: Agent bakery: Windows agent MSI is not signed anymoreā€¦
  • 13851 FIX: Baked windows agent packages are not signed anymoreā€¦
  • 13693 FIX: Dedecated agent updater systemd unitsā€¦
  • 12703 FIX: Drop experimental PySNMP backend
  • 15421 FIX: Improve agent updater loggingā€¦
  • 14738 FIX: Linux agent: agent controller not in path when installing to non-default locationā€¦
  • 14961 FIX: MRPE: Deprecate add_age flagā€¦
  • 14399 FIX: PATH update of linux agent when deployed via bakeryā€¦
  • 14718 FIX: SAP HANA bakery plugin: Handle user store key correctly
  • 15276 FIX: agent bakery: win_script_runas: improve helpā€¦
  • 14958 FIX: cmk-update-agent: Fix lockfile handlingā€¦
  • 14959 FIX: cmk-update-agent: Limit update intervalā€¦
  • 14733 FIX: cmk-update-agent: Prevent the minutely timer from flooding the journalctl on Linuxā€¦
  • 14732 FIX: cmk-update-agent: Retry lockingā€¦
  • 14602 FIX: cmk-update-agent: Use configured var directoryā€¦
  • 14956 FIX: mk_logwatch: Make regular expression for logfiles configurable in agent bakeryā€¦
  • 13682 FIX: super_server: Fix deactivation of Solaris network serviceā€¦
  • 13683 FIX: Solaris agent update removes services symlinkā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14607 FIX: cmk_update_agent: Fix fetching root certificates from serverā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14609 FIX: super_server: Cleanup config files when installing a bakery packageā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!

Checks & agents:

  • 13853 WATO supports windows agent controller parametersā€¦
  • 13017 Add apc netbotz smoke and fluid sensors
  • 13009 Add mobileiron inventory plugin
  • 14963 Check_MK Agent service: State if host is exluded from agent updatesā€¦
  • 13433 Enable bakery to configure redis to use socket connection instead of tcp
  • 13007 Mobileiron Source Hostā€¦
  • 14355 Windows agent: Log file rotation is now configurable
  • 14652 Real-time checks: Simplify encryption setupā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 13855 FIX: Bakery sets windows agent product name correctlyā€¦
  • 13014 FIX: Fix agent proxmox bug if duration is more than 24 hoursā€¦
  • 13008 FIX: Fix haproxy status on DOWN 1/2 and MAINT(via)
  • 14855 FIX: Fix hitachi_hnas_volume OID for virtualVolumeTitanQuotasUsageLimit
  • 13006 FIX: proxmox backup time calculationā€¦
  • 14605 FIX: windows_updates: correctly evaluate rulesetā€¦

Configuration generation:

  • 13019 FIX: Update requests moduleā€¦

Core & setup:

  • 13295 Microcore config generation: made exceptions from worker processes more clear
  • 15156 Send metrics to InfluxDB in batchā€¦
  • 15157 Zip metrics sent to InfluxDBā€¦
  • 14285 FIX: Fix frozen Microcore (Livestatus not responding) during config reloadsā€¦
  • 12704 FIX: Do not create Carbon data if no connection is configuredā€¦
  • 14287 FIX: Fix another source for frozen Microcore during config reloads (Addition to #14285)ā€¦
  • 14952 FIX: Fix microcore crash caused invalid data in history filesā€¦
  • 13906 FIX: Fix perf data not sent to Carbon if no state is selected
  • 14771 FIX: Fix ping endpoint for InfluxDBā€¦
  • 13910 FIX: Fix wrong start and end time for downtimesā€¦
  • 15252 FIX: Fixed ā€œprocessing of perfdataā€ conditionā€¦
  • 14170 FIX: Fixed hanging activate changes on unfortunate error reporting
  • 12702 FIX: Improve performance of recurring downtimes
  • 14949 FIX: Malformed UTF-8 data no longer result in loss of state fileā€¦
  • 15158 FIX: Restart periodic notifications after FLAPPINGSTOP
  • 13915 FIX: Wait 30 s between failed attempts to connect to InfluxDBā€¦
  • 13914 FIX: Escape semicolon in log entriesā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!

Dynamic host configuration:

  • 14580 FIX: DCD: Piggyback hosts are now updated and deleted again
  • 15277 FIX: DCD: Trust ā€œTrusted certificate authorities for SSLā€ā€¦
  • 15170 FIX: DCD: fix REST API authentication problemsā€¦
  • 15206 FIX: DCD: resolve bug when hosts with locked attributes are included in Phase 2.2ā€¦
  • 13649 FIX: Dynamic host management: Do not fail to start on missing automation userā€¦

Event console:

  • 14841 Add Syslog Facility logfile
  • 14851 Improve performance of ā€œArchive eventsā€ actionsā€¦
  • 13016 Refactor event bulk delete methodā€¦
  • 13020 FIX: Fix EventConsole ā€œGenerate Eventā€ ā€œInternal Server Errorā€ā€¦
  • 13018 FIX: Fix a regression during events delete/archive
  • 14852 FIX: Fix line number filter in event historyā€¦
  • 14854 FIX: Use system MIB for OID translation in EC

Inline SNMP:

  • 14948 FIX: Inline SNMP Backend uses credentials correctlyā€¦

Livestatus:

  • 14778 Add number of bytes sent to influxdb, rrd or carbon to status tableā€¦
  • 14775 Add overflow counters to status tableā€¦
  • 14776 Add perf_data_count and metrics_count columns to status tableā€¦
  • 13890 FIX: Resurrect magic column name prefixing for cached state history tableā€¦

Livestatus proxy:

  • 14163 FIX: liveproxyd: fixed bug that caused livestatus to disconnect the client connection
  • 14158 FIX: liveproxyd: fixed occassional connection loss/timeouts
  • 14159 FIX: liveproxyd: the heartbeat client now tests all open channels before disconnecting the remote site

Metrics system:

  • 14534 Add unit conversion support for graphsā€¦
  • 13862 InfluxDB Connections: Add option to use password store
  • 14853 FIX: Add auto-deleted events to history

Notifications:

  • 13899 SEC: Notification spooler: Support for TLS authenticationā€¦
  • 14320 FIX: Fix KeyError on mknotifyd start after upgrade to 2.1.0
  • 14747 FIX: Fix duplicate history log while processing spoolfilesā€¦
  • 14118 FIX: Notification spooler: Fix execution of notifications on sites only forwardingā€¦
  • 14284 FIX: Notification spooler: Fix producing corrupted spool filesā€¦
  • 14752 FIX: ServiceNow: Fix usage of custom description

Ntopng integration:

  • 14160 FIX: ntop: fixed mostly broken network statistic pages due to the use of an incompatible library

Other components:

  • 13824 Bake mk_filestats for solaris
  • 15065 SEC: Path-Traversal in MKP storingā€¦

REST API:

  • 14838 REST API: New endpoint for downloading the license usage report
  • 13436 FIX: Fix 500 errors on BI aggregation endpointsā€¦
  • 13435 FIX: Fix 500 errors on BI rule endpointsā€¦
  • 13963 FIX: REST API will no longer fail handling folders with the ā€œbake agent packageā€ attribute
  • 13408 FIX: RESTAPI: allow downloading vanilla and generic agentsā€¦

Reporting & availability:

  • 14143 Add option to use narrow rendering for informational columnsā€¦
  • 14722 Improve readability of SLA reportsā€¦
  • 13723 SEC: Fix permission check when editing a report
  • 14326 FIX: Fix PDF export of views with context / search filters
  • 14749 FIX: Fix TypeError on export of graph collections as PDF
  • 14472 FIX: Fix TypeError on scheduled report executionā€¦
  • 15118 FIX: Fix adding of content elements ā€œfor multipleā€ to reportsā€¦
  • 14757 FIX: Fix availability timeline in reports
  • 15000 FIX: Fix combined graphs in reportsā€¦
  • 14295 FIX: Fix creating combined graph via element editor
  • 13885 FIX: Fix deletion and moving of report content
  • 14294 FIX: Fix empty elements for frontmatter templates
  • 14323 FIX: Fix error on report scheduler creationā€¦
  • 14119 FIX: Fix ignored site filter on exporting views as PDF report
  • 14471 FIX: Fix possible AttributeError on report renderingā€¦
  • 14110 FIX: Fix using macros in sub directory option of scheduler entries
  • 14888 FIX: Fix wrong color for down hosts
  • 14883 FIX: Send scheduled reports per recipientā€¦

Setup:

  • 14101 Add InfluxDB exporterā€¦
  • 14606 Agent Bakery: Optionally log to dedicated logfileā€¦
  • 14937 Azure: add the option to select services to monitorā€¦
  • 14649 Extension packages: Support different versions in distributed setupsā€¦
  • 13417 KUBE: add dashboards
  • 15208 users: fix error when changing the password for an existing userā€¦
  • 14376 SEC: Mask passwords in rule export
  • 14881 FIX: Add missing service state conditions for alert handlerā€¦
  • 14950 FIX: Correct processing of the rule Install Python runtime environmentā€¦
  • 14111 FIX: Dynamic host management: Fix MKAPIError
  • 15008 FIX: Fix macro usage in host check command ā€œUse the status of the serviceā€¦ā€ā€¦
  • 15236 FIX: Host renaming got stuck when ā€œAutomatically create monitoring agentsā€ was activatedā€¦
  • 13424 FIX: KUBE: dashboard: multiple sites: Node overview showing sitesā€¦
  • 14138 FIX: Reduce erroneous retrieval and flushing of RRDsā€¦
  • 14868 FIX: Using of the rule ā€˜Installation paths for agentsā€™ doesnā€™t crash bake process

Setup, site management:

  • 14976 Add SAML Authentication to Checkmk UIā€¦
  • 13012 Add support for Ubuntu 22.04
  • 15445 SAML metadata endpoint: support HEAD requests
  • 15448 SAML: response signature is optionalā€¦
  • 15042 FIX: mkbackup: Do not list system backups (appliance only)ā€¦
  • 15041 FIX: Improve Setup search performanceā€¦
  • 15447 FIX: SAML: global settings default user profile overwrites manual configurationā€¦
  • 14979 FIX: SAML: remove empty encryption certificate entry from metadataā€¦
  • 14978 FIX: SAML: remove unsupported algorithms from metadataā€¦

The Checkmk Micro Core:

  • 14773 CMC expands custom services attributes for Nagios pluginsā€¦
  • 14490 Warn user when number of checkers exceeds number of available CPUsā€¦
  • 14685 FIX: Fixed real-time checks with encryptionā€¦
  • 13888 FIX: Handle comments/downtimes for vanished hosts/servicesā€¦
  • 14688 FIX: Increased metric queue sizesā€¦
  • 15253 FIX: Abort CMC startup if state file could not be read or parsedā€¦
  • 13909 FIX: Accomodate large agent output
  • 14608 FIX: Agent Bakery: Stabilize bake & signā€¦
  • 13618 FIX: Checkmk free edition ships with same amount of fetcher helpers as enterpriseā€¦
  • 13908 FIX: First field sent to carbon must be the host name
  • 13912 FIX: Fix crash on restarting the RRDHelperā€¦
  • 15254 FIX: Fixed incorrect availability calculation when a host was removed and added againā€¦
  • 13093 FIX: Limit various fields lengths when writing to the monitoring historyā€¦
  • 12767 FIX: added tags and labels to cmcdump exported and imported data

User interface:

  • 15135 New option to share views, dashboards and report definitionsā€¦
  • 14144 Add timestamp to time filter options
  • 15075 Enable SAML login for the mobile version
  • 14491 Kubernetes dashboards: Improve page header
  • 14495 Kubernetes dashboards: Introduce specific breadcrumbs
  • 15255 FIX: Fixed removal of persistent acknowledgementsā€¦
  • 13760 FIX: Alert Statistics Dashlet: Fix crash (internal error)
  • 14726 FIX: Average scatterplot tooltip now renders across dashlet boundariesā€¦
  • 14487 FIX: Dashboard element ā€œHost stateā€: Fix $HOST_ALIAS$ macro
  • 15009 FIX: Fix ā€œinvalid syntaxā€ error on adding metrics to custom graphsā€¦
  • 14720 FIX: Fix Percentage of service problems dashlet in custom dashboardsā€¦
  • 15132 FIX: Fix crendential input field in subscription settings
  • 14078 FIX: Fix deletion of users with none-ASCII characters in distributed setups with configuration replication
  • 13626 FIX: Linux/Windows dashboards: Adjust titles for inv columns
  • 14423 FIX: Main dashboard: Remove unwanted data from the graph ā€œPercentage of total service problemsā€ā€¦
  • 14541 FIX: Main dashboard: Render host & service problems graphs in certain multi-site setupsā€¦
  • 13873 FIX: Remove reports from ā€˜Viewsā€™ sidebar snapin
  • 13395 FIX: Site overview dashlet: Remove service filters
  • 14104 FIX: Fix error on adding views to reportsā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14332 FIX: Fix title of Forecast graphsā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!

Changes in the Checkmk Cloud Edition:

Checks & agents:

  • 14370 Add AWS/CloudFront checkā€¦
  • 14939 Add AWS/SNS checkā€¦
  • 15018 Additional Google Cloud Platform supportā€¦
  • 14575 OpenShift: Introduce Monitoringā€¦
  • 14698 aws_ecs: Monitor AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS)ā€¦
  • 15136 aws_elasticache: Monitor AWS ElastiCacheā€¦
  • 15144 azure_app_gateway: Monitor Azure Application Gatewayā€¦
  • 15142 azure_resource_health: Monitor Azure Resource Healthā€¦
  • 15138 azure_vaults: Monitor Azure Recovery Services Vaultā€¦

Setup:

  • 15243 Automatic creation and registration of hostsā€¦

User interface:

  • 13628 Dashboards: New cloud dashboards for storage services on AWS, Azure and GCP
  • 13627 Dashboards: New cloud dashboards for virtual machines on AWS, Azure and GCP

Changes in the Checkmk Managed Services Edition:

Reporting & availability:

  • 14993 FIX: reports: Fix possible KeyError on update from 2.0 to 2.1ā€¦

Setup:

  • 14103 FIX: Fix synchronisation of password store entries to customer sitesā€¦
  • 14189 FIX: Fixed incorrect assignment of customer sensitive host data to other customers

User interface:

  • 12524 CME: Allow two custom logo uploads
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!
  • 14331 FIX: Fix duplicated ā€œCustomersā€ dashlet in main dashboard
  • 14499 FIX: activate changes: performance issues when synchronising users and user settingsā€¦
  • 14080 FIX: Fix synchronisation of password store to customer sitesā€¦
    NOTE: Please refer to the migration notes!

You can download Checkmk from our download page: Download Checkmk for free | Checkmk

List of all changes: Werks

Please mail bug reports and qualified feedback to feedback-2.2-beta at checkmk.com.
We greatly thank you for using Checkmk and wish you a successful monitoring,

Your Checkmk Team

7 Likes

FYI: Due to post size limitations, the werk links for changes in all editions (1138 :slight_smile:) have been skipped in the announcement. Please find them on our werks page.

No free enterprise link u.u?

I adapted the announcement to include a statement regarding the changes to the former Free Edition.

Iā€™m currently getting a mailer daemon error for feedback-2.2 at checkmk.com:

Generierender Server: googlemail.com

feedback-2.2@checkmk.com
Remote Server returned '554 5.0.0 < #5.0.0 smtp; The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or unnecessary spaces. Learn more at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6596>'

same happens for the feedback-2.2-beta from Our plan for 2.2. Release

Sorry, changed it. Should be
feedback-2.2-beta at checkmk.com

And IT is working on that one

EDIT: Working now

Dear community!

Beta release is an exciting time for us ā€“ we can receive your feedback and make 2.2 better.

To make the process more coordinated, we have 2 more threads in the forum I would offer to check out if you are interested in the release:

And discussion of the call we will have dedicated to the beta release:

In the call thread, please vote for your preferred connectivity tool soon ā€“ I will close it later today.

Hoping to see you on the call or amongst the beta testers :slight_smile:

Sara
:vulcan_salute:

2 Likes

Well, tried to upgrade. Ended with this error message:

OK
Executing update-pre-hooks script "02_cmk-update-config"...
-| Unknown error on pre update action.
-| Error: name 'Tuple' is not defined
-|
-| Please repair this and run 'cmk-update-config'BEFORE starting the site again.Processing pre update actions...
-|  01/04 Rulesets...
ERROR (exit code: 1)

Fortunately my CheckMK server is a VM and Iā€™d taken a snapshot before the ugrade attempt. Just rolled it back and it works again. But for now Iā€™ll stay on 2.1.

The change means itā€™s no longer possible to use the Free edition for more than 30 days, correct? As a user of the raw edition (cre), Iā€™m not impacted by this change but it definitely has me worried that someday it might not be possible anymore to use Checkmk for our homelabs.

Could you provide more details regarding the long-term plans for the Checkmk Raw Edition? Thank you.

The Checkmk Cloud Edition includes a free tier up to 750 services (basically converted the 25 hosts to services).
This is equivalent to the Checkmk Free Edition.

The main reason for this is that we wanted to reduce the number of builds which we have to do. And as there was no license management in Checkmk previously, we had to build a different software package to make something like the Checkmk Free Edition. Now with the Cloud Edition we have a license management feature. Therefore we were able to merge the Free Edition in the Cloud Edition and reduce the number of builds.
As a user of the Free Edition, therefore nothing actually changes for you (except that instead of 25 hosts you can now have up to 750 services and that you have to use the Checkmk Cloud Edition builds).

The Checkmk Raw Edition stays untouched from this.

2 Likes

For trying out a beta, we always recommend to create a backup of your site and update that one. If you run into any problems there, please help up by sending a mail to feedback-2.2-beta [at] checkmk.com with details (likely a MKP or another extension in /local is causing this)

1 Like

So the ā€žFree Editionā€œ will actually be a ā€žFree Cloud Editionā€œ?

If I want to run a free edition for more than 30 days (and for 5 hosts with 200 services in total, for example) I have to install the ā€žCloud Editionā€œ and simply donā€™t buy any license? There wonā€™t be a Free Non-Cloud Edition. Is that correct?

1 Like

So, to be clear, no 30-days limitation for the Cloud edition? Or does the trial licence require to be renewed every month? Would appreciate more details on this.

As for the Checkmk Raw Edition, we can only hope itā€™s here to stay for the foreseable future after 2.2 :pray:

1 Like

On a fresh site, you have 30 days unlimited (basically same as when you install the CFE at the moment). If you havenā€™t entered license information, after the 30 days, you are restricted to 750 services (basically same as with CFE at the moment) and 1 site. Thus, if you want to remain in the free tier, you donā€™t have to enter any license information.

When you enter valid license information, you basically unlock the services and site limitation.

@Dirk Exactly as you say (except the Raw Edition which is of course also for free)

We havenā€™t changed our commitment to the Checkmk Raw Edition and we donā€™t plan to change in the foreseeable future.

EDIT: We are preparing a FAQ regarding the licensing / Free Edition etc., which we will share in a blog post or knowledge base article. Your questions are helpful to complete that FAQ. Thx!

5 Likes

Hey guys!
I tested the 2.2.0b1 checkmk-raw docker container on our development instance and almost all steps of our deploy script work flawless in 2.2.0b1!

The only thing I encountered problems with were the cmkadmin password, it isnā€™t possible to set it via exporting CMK_PASSWORD before running docker-entrypoint.sh, as we did before.
But this is no problem, because I was able to set it with su - dev -c "cmk-passwd cmkadmin --stdin <<< $(cat /run/secrets/checkmk_admin_password)" -s /bin/bash from root in the deploy script which runs as health check in the container.

I am looking forward to the Community Call on Monday!

working good with this..ā€¦

Is Tribe29 really dropping support for additional ~36 rulesets in 2.2 compared to 2.1?

Regarding deprecated rulesets: I think there was a new feature introduced, which makes actually all deprecated rulesets appear.
As can be seen in that commit (Refactoring: Moved check parameters from unsorted.py to dedicated modā€¦ Ā· tribe29/checkmk@c499319 Ā· GitHub ), already in January 2019 many of the rulesets shown in your screenshot had been deprecated (probably even long before).

Then some where already deprecated in 2.1 (e.g. local checks in Checkmk clusters, Inline-SNMP, check for correct version of Checkmk agent, piggybacked Docker containers), which can be more easily seen when looking at 2.1.

The, some are counted double because they appear under service monitoring rules and enforced services.

So the number is more like <10 deprecated rulesets.

Can you please clarify why this is surprising? It is rather normal, if features are deprecated, e.g. because they are replaced by new features (e.g. we completely rebuild the Kubernetes monitoring in 2.1, which includes many features, which were covered by the Prometheus integration, thus the respective elements were deprecated for the Prometheus integration).

2 Likes