Biggest Problem with Nagios: Poor Setup/Installation

[Mark Duling]

jeff vier <jeff.vier at tradingtechnologies.com> on Monday, August 16, 2004
at 1:07 PM -0800 wrote:
>Maybe you should read the DOCS.
>
>I think the "idiosyncrosis" (sic) are minimal, and well documented.
>I, and many others, judging by this thread, have never had the
>"problems" that you and the original poster describe.  Perhaps that says
>more about you (and him) than the tool.
>
>SOME checks work that way.  Many don't.
>Describing ICMP (ping) as a client/service relationship is awfully
>convoluted.  Not to mention passive services.  and negation.  And load
>checks, and disk checks.  and others.
>
>Not true.
>
>what?
>
>So, you don't delineate between host_name and address?  And you think
>Nagios has idiosyncrasies?
>
>You *really* didn't read the docs, did you?

This is all material for a Saturday Night Live type of satire, which has
already been done, on the anti-social behavior of tech type people.  Great
stuff.

I think Sam's commnents have quite a bit of merit.  I, like he, do my own
internal documentation so that if I get hit by a truck, whoever somes
after me won't have to mine all the original docs just to know how *I*
used a particular open source program if he wants to maintain what I set
up.  It's best not to reinvent the wheel the first day on a job.  And,
amazingly enough, my documentation also addresses at least one of the
things of which Sam spoke so I guess we think alike.  In fact, it helped
me to clarify a conceptual part of it, although I hope he doesn't expect
any credit.  :)

I was also going to contribute my HOWTO to the list when finished, but I'm
actually reconsidering since no one like to see their writing torn to
shreds.  I think probably if the developers collaborated with a technical
writer who would take their docs, revise them, and resubmit them and get
their final ok, then the definciencies mentioned in this thread might get
addressed.  I would probably be willing to contribute to this end since
I've had some technical writing training.  But I think the least
constructive parts of this thread have been the responses to, rather than
the critiques of, the documentation.  But then I am hoping for some more
good Saturday Night Live tech support satires, so I am rather conflicted. 
:)
>

Good documentation takes into account *the reader*.  It is clear that some
on this list don't think that if a certain number, or even a certain type,
of person has trouble with the documentation that this tells us anything
meaningful.  I think it does.  Whether or not the programmers care about
it is their business, but flaming users who want to *contribute* to fill a
perceived deficiency seems like a really bad idea.



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