Empty hostgroups ok, but not if services defined?

[Marcus Fleige]

Hi again,

Marcus Fleige schrieb am 27.03.2008 15:35 Uhr:
> Hi Ethan, hi list,
> 
> i got a little problem with empty hostgroups in my config.
>  From Nagios Version 3.0rc3 and up, empty hostgroups are
> ignored by default. So far, so good, but when i define a
> service for an empty hostgroup, i get an error:
> 
> Error: Could not expand hostgroups and/or hosts specified
> in service (config file '/etc/nagios/hostgroup-templates/
> services-hardware-accesspoint.cfg', starting on line 1)
> 
> Is it possible to circumvent this error? My initial idea was
> to define a dummy host and make it a member of every hostgroup.
> But i think this is not the most elegant way to deal with this...
> 

As this is bothering me, I'll try to make things clearer:

I'm using hostgroups to inherit services to hostgroup members, the 
hostgroups are globally defined. Now, as i am building distributed 
monitoring, some of these hostgroups are only used on the first 
monitoring node and unknown to the second. This leads to a configuration 
error on the second node, as the hostgroup is empty but there are still 
services defined for it.

Per Definition, it is ok for Nagios if there is an empty hostgroup, it 
is no problem if you define a hostgroup in your config without any 
members ("0 Warnings, 0 Errors").

But if you define a service for that empty hostgroup, Nagios complains 
about being unable to expand the hostgroup:

Error: Could not expand hostgroups and/or hosts specified in service 
(config file 
'/etc/nagios/hostgroup-templates/services-hardware-accesspoint.cfg', 
starting on line 1)

For me, this is somewhat inconsistent behaviour. From my understanding, 
Nagios should ignore the empty hostgroup completely including its 
services instead of complaining.

What do you think about that? Thanks for your time,


Regards,

Marcus

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference 
Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save $100. 
Use priority code J8TL2D2. 
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone