check_nsca

[Ralph.Grothe at itdz-berlin.de]

Hi,

I've also set up a remote host to send passive checks (i.e. from
Nagios server's persective I guess)
to the Nagios server via send_nsca.

This didn't require another Nagios instance on that remote host
at all.

But it required additional compilation of libmcrypt if you needed
to do code authentication
against common crypto systems, which I think is sensible.

What needs to be done is written in the README of the source
tarball of nsca.

You also must make sure that the password string (cleartext, thus
be restrictive with ownership and mode bits of that file)
in send_nsca.cfg is the same as in nsca.cfg of the nsca daemon on
your Nagios server.
The same aggreement of course has to exist on the encryption
algorithm.

As for checking if things are working (before having set up a
passive checking service in Nagios)
it is quite easy.

With my Nagios installation the command file is actually a FIFO
(special file on Unix,
don't know how this is handled on non-Unix OSes?), indicated by
the leading "p" in the long listing's 1st field.

$ ls -l /opt/sw/nagios/var/rw/nagios.cmd 
prw-rw----   1 nagios   nagcmd         0 Aug 10 11:07
/opt/sw/nagios/var/rw/nagios.cmd

The IPC over FIFOs works that one process is writing into the
FIFO while another is reading from it.
The drawback is the blocking issue.
If there is now writer the reader is blocked until something got
written to the FIFO.

So for a mere check, even while nagios isn't running, only the
nsca daemon is required to be run
(usually through inetd on the Nagios server), you could just do a
cat or tail (or other reading command)
on the FIFO.

The format of what send_nsca reads from stdin on the remote host
is also documented on the help screen of send_nsca.

If it is correctly formated (i.e. No. of fields, field
delimiter), and if IPC works between send_nsca
and nsca on your Nagios server (i.e. cryptography as mentioned
above is working)
then the cat should output the check result.



But maybe I'm totally wrong because I only recently started using
Nagios and still may have a misconception of its working.
Better trust on the gurus' answers.

Regards
Ralph


> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net
> [mailto:nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net]On Behalf Of
Dj
> kavanski
> Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 3:24 PM
> To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] check_nsca
> 
> 
> Hi D				
> 
> 
> 
> Does Nagios(ie 2.0b3) need to be installed on the remote system
>  running the send_nsca daemon?
> 
> 
> 
> If you are using nsca does that mean you are also 
> implementing distribute
> d monitoring?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> ~DjK
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> - Dj kavanski (bitsandbytes)
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------------
> 
> This thread is located in the archive at this URL:
> 
> http://www.nagiosexchange.org/nagios-users.34.0.html?&tx_maill
> isttofaq_pi
> 1[showUid]=8720
> 
> 					
> 
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