PyVarnish is a collection of python management tools for Varnish

Currently it only sends Varnish stat output to Graphite.

This software is used in production and works. Documentation and tests are a work in progress. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me. Any contributions are also welcomed.

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The PyVarnish package is designed to be run at intervals from crontab. It runs varnishstat on remote varnish servers using SSH commands and sends the data it receives to a Graphite server over UDP.

This guide assumes that you already have a Graphite server set up. Graphite: http://graphite.wikidot.com/

It also assumes familiarity with SSH. In order to run properly PyVarnish needs to be able to run command remotely. The recommended way to do this is to set up a restricted account on each of your varnish servers with permission to run a single command

Below is an example of ssh authorized_keys file for the graphite user on your varnish server.

command="/usr/local/bin/graphitewrapper.sh",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-pty ssh-rsa publickey`

/usr/local/bin/graphitewrapper.sh might look like this :

#!/bin/sh
# http://binblog.info/2008/10/20/openssh-going-flexible-with-forced-commands/
case "$SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND" in
    "varnishstat -x")
            varnishstat -x
            ;;
    "sysctl fs.file-nr")
            /sbin/sysctl fs.file-nr
            ;;
    *)
            exit 1
            ;;
esac

from github :

pip install https://github.com/redsnapper8t8/pyvarnish/zipball/master

or simply download to a local directory and run from there.

Once installed you need to edit settings.py :

VARNISH_SERVERS = ('server1', "server2",)
SSH_CONFIG = "/home/username/.ssh/config"
DEBUG = True
CARBON_SERVER = 'localhost'
CARBON_PORT = 2003

• Replace server1, server2 etc with the hostnames of your own varnish servers
• SSH_CONFIG needs to refer to your .ssh/config file
• CARBON_SERVER and CARBON_PORT should refer to your graphite server.

Then create a script that runs from crontab to run parse_stats.py