Packet loss reported by check_ping?

Jason Byrns jason-sourceforge at microlnk.net
Wed Dec 13 14:18:48 CET 2006


Good morning, all.

I've been tweaking our Nagios install over the years.  I've often 
wondered exactly how the check_ping plugin reports its results.

I used to leave this plugin at the default number of packets, which I 
believe is five.  If and when we saw warnings on packet loss, it would 
usually give us numbers like 16%, 32%, or multiples like that.  Why not 
multiples of 20%, given that it tried five packets?

Now I'm worried, though.  I recently changed our default ping commands 
to only use ONE ping packet.  This was due to advice I found after a 
Google search, when I was seeing extremely high latencies on my host 
(and some service) checks.  It certainly seemed to help, too, now my 
host latency is usually below one second.  (Instead of the FIFTEEN 
MINUTES it was reporting before that)

But I still see some reports of packet loss.  Like, 50% is a common 
number I now see.  HOW is it seeing anything but either 0% or 100% 
packet loss, if it uses only one packet per host check??

Also, along those lines...  I recently moved from the 1.2 Nagios to the 
more recent 2.4-2.5 Nagios.  Nagios 1.X seemed to only trigger a host 
check if a service check failed.  Nagios 2.X seems to ALWAYS run host 
checks in addition to service checks.  The fact that host checks are 
currently not run in parallel seems like this can really limit performance.

Why did that behavior change?  Will host checks be run in parallel for 
the 3.0 series, like I think I read once...?

Thanks for any input!

-- 
Jason Byrns
Production Manager
System Administrator
http://www.MicroLnk.com/
402-328-8600 ext. 653

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