Nagios 2.0!

Ethan Galstad nagios at nagios.org
Thu Oct 21 09:39:38 CEST 2004


Okay, there have been a number of messages on the list over the past 
few days, relating to Nagios 2.0 development (or lack thereof), that 
need to be addressed.

First, this project does not rule my life.  I imagine the plugin 
developers feel the same about their involvement, though I can't 
speak for them.  This project is something we work on in our spare 
time.  We don't work at this full time and we don't get paychecks 
from Nagios, Inc.  We all have day jobs and, believe me, we don't 
rush home after a full day of work and plop ourselves back down at a 
computer to eagerly apply all the latest patches so we can get a warm 
fuzzy feeling inside.

Development on this project has its ups and downs, its slow periods 
and its frenetic periods.  This is a slower time as far as 
development is concerned.  Please realize that without slowing down 
occassionally, we'd all go crazy, end up hating this project, and 
eventually abandon it altogether.  Amazingly, this project has 
managed to survive and thrive over the past 5+ years.

As far as patches are concerned, yes there is a bit of a backlog.  
That's just the way I've had to juggle things lately.  Every so often 
I'll go through and apply some of the backlogged patches.  Some, not 
all.  I don't always think all the patches have merit.  Some patches 
I sit on and think about for months before I decide whether or not 
they should be incorporated.  Those that I do commit are often 
rewritten or mangled before doing so.  I rarely, *rarely*, ever apply 
patches to CVS verbatim.  Sometimes I edit for coding style, 
othertimes its to change to patch so it doesn't break things 
elsewhere.  I always manually review the patches that come in, so I 
can completely understand what they're doing and what they'll affect. 
 As such, it doesn't matter to me if different developers submit 
conflicting patches or patches against a slightly older version of 
the code.  I can manage that just fine.

As far as giving additional developers CVS write access, I'm not at 
that point yet.  After 2.0 or 3.0 I may very well decide to leave 
this project for good and hand over the reins to others.  At that 
point, you can all go nuts and do whatever the new maintainers allow. 
 For the time being, however, patches for the core program still need 
to go through me.  If you're not happy with that, you can always:

1.  Run 1.x and not 2.0 alpha code in your production environment
2.  Keep bugging me until I commit the patch to CVS
3.	Maintain a separate repository with your own patches (a mini-fork)
4.  Fully fork the code into another project

If you choose option #3, you might very well run into the problem 
where you have a highly customized version of Nagios which is no 
longer stock.  As I mentioned previously, I don't accept all patches 
and I rewrite/mangle many of them before committing them to CVS.  As 
long as you're able to keep on top of the Nagios CVS commits when 
they occur, you can manage it, but it'll keep you busy.  Some big 
organizations do something like this, so they can have a customized 
version of Nagios in house.  Of course, they have some extra work to 
do when Nagios CVS commits are made and when new versions are 
released.

If you want to fork the project, please feel free to do so.  Many of 
you are well qualified to do this, and I am certain that your project 
will succeed, so long as you can dedicate the time and energy to 
maintain the project over a number of versions and years.  Just don't 
name the forked project anything similar to "Nagios", as I have a 
trademark on the name.

I've heard mention of the fact that "some people" may be abandoning 
Nagios because the alpha 2.0 code isn't being patched quickly enough 
or released soon enough.  What is this?  Slashdot??  What FUD!  
Nagios/NetSaint has been around for over 5 years and it gets better 
and has more users with every version.  

Am I to believe that people who have used NetSaint and upgraded 
through Nagios 1.x are going to abandon it for a commercial app 
because 2.0 isn't coming out soon enough?  If that's true, why in the 
world were they running NetSaint x.xx or Nagios 1.x in the first 
place then?  Those versions didn't have the new features that Nagios 
2.0 will.  And yet, amazingly, they chose to use it.  Give me a 
break.  If you desperately need the features that Nagios 2.0 will 
have (or won't) and a commercial app offers it, lay down the cash and 
buy it.  Geez!   Don't use Open Source for purely philosphical 
reasons when your business would be better off with a commercial app.

What about the people run 2.0 alpha code you ask?  What about them?  
Oh dear!  If you choose to run *alpha* code, you are asking to get 
put through the ringer on a few things.  Bugs galore, "slow" patches, 
etc.  If you want stable, run 1.x.  If you want bleeding edge, try 
2.0.  But don't complain too loudly if it doesn't work perfectly.  
Don't complain if all the new patches don't get applied fast enough, 
or at all.  If you're using alpha code in a production environment 
and your business depends on it, you should tidy up your resume 
immediately because nothing is guaranteed when it comes to this 
stuff.

Bottom line is: don't run Nagios because of what features it *might* 
have in the future.  Run it because it works for you *now*.  Ask 
yourself, "Why am I running Nagios *right now*"?  Present moment.  
Its not a Zen thing, its just common sense.  If it doesn't work well 
enough for you right now, put your energy towards finding something 
that does.

Andreas, you've stated that you're concerned by the lack of CVS 
activity with regards to patches.  Okay then.  In May I spun off NRPE 
as a separate project from the Nagios CVS repository in order to help 
free up some of my time and let others take over as maintainers.  You 
and Derrick volunteered to be the primary maintainers, with me as a 
backup.  At that time you had made some mods to NRPE that were 
supposedly going to be committed to CVS.  Five months down the road 
and there's still nothing in CVS.  The project site 
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/nrpe) is deserted, other than for 
the  barebones home page I put up.  What's the status with this?  
This is as much of a concern to me as backlogged patches for Nagios.  
Should I import the old NRPE CVS repository into the new and/or 
recruit other maintainers?  Please let me know.

Alright, enough for now.  I'm tired, irritated, most likely 
irrational, and have probably managed to tick off more than a few 
people.  I'll post a followup in the next few days with a list of 
outstanding 2.0 patches that I'm aware of and list off which ones 
aren't going to make it, which ones are, etc.  Ciao.  


Ethan Galstad,
Nagios Developer
---
Email: nagios at nagios.org
Website: http://www.nagios.org



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