Biggest Problem with Nagios: Poor Setup/Installation

Sam Stave sam_stave at yahoo.com
Mon Aug 16 21:05:12 CEST 2004


Well, i can tell you that this is an extremely poorly
documented util.

There is no place that states nor clearly describes
the exact methods for getting a check to run -
especially when it is not an actual service that a
host is presenting to external users.

There is a tremendous amount of trial and error and
WTF type of reading and re-reading the config files to
figure out how the thing is supposed to be configured.

While this is a great way to really learn what the
tool is doing and how it actually does it - just
because one person with sys admin experience can make
many deductions quickly and flow past any issues -
most of the undocumented idiosyncrosis of the utility
can be show-stoppers for the "average" person.

I am writing a clear and concise installation and
configuration run-book which i will publish on this
list, so one example is:

Nagios is a utility which is designed to natively
check external services presented to clients on a
network. Nagios will act as a client of the service
and access the service to determine if it is actually
running. In order to do this, Nagios requires that one
host definition be placed in the host.cfg file
(usually a host is defined as a single IP) - then
services associated with this host can be listed in
the service.cfg file. For example, host 10.1.1.1 may
be a web/ftp server.

For 10.1.1.1, you would tell Nagios to run a check_ftp
and a check_http service check.

Your host definition in host.cfg looks like this:

[Standard host definition]

A service check definition associated with a host
should be entered into service.cfg like this:

[standrd service definition]

You can list as many service checks to a single host
as you like.

The services that Nagios can check natively are all
*external* services. For internal system checks, such
as check_disk check_load and other checks which must
run commands on a local host, Nagios needs to be
configured to run these checks via ssh. The
check_by_ssh command allows for Nagios to SSH to a
machine, execute a Nagios plugin that is *installed on
the remote host* and report based on the output of
that check.

-----

That is the level of description that Nagios does
*not* have... and that was just off the top of my
head... and I am new to Nagios. So i am sure that
those who are much more familiar with it should have
been able to write some better documentation.

additionally, there are other issues, like what
dependancy packages need to be added. The fact that it
appears that check_by_ssh does *NOT* work when both
the Nagios Server and Client are solaris (as I have
found - check_by_ssh returns no output when I have
both server and client as solaris boxes - but I am
currently setting up both a linux server and client to
verify this)

The installation and configuration runbook that I am
writing is for me, but i am happy to share it with the
Nagios community....

Sam





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