Request for Feedback: Nagios Plugin

[Kevin Menard]

Hi all,

I'm looking for some feedback on a plugin developed for our WebReboot
Enterprise products.  It won't require you to download anything, to
install anything, or to purchase anything.  The details on the plugin
thus far can be found at: http://plato/nagios/index.html

Really what I'm looking for is feedback on the overall design.  Certain
decisions had to be made with what constitutes a host check versus a
service check or a host event handler versus a service one.  Likewise,
when a corrective action is taken is fairly subjective too.  E.g., HARD
only?  Soft but after 3 attempts?

I'm looking for help with a few of the following:

1) The password to the WebReboot Enterprise has to be stored somewhere.
How would you like to see this done?  For simplicity, it's specified as
a command argument right now.  Obviously, anyone with permissions to
open your host and service configs can see it.  One suggestion had been
to push this off into a plugin configuration file and restrict access to
that.

2) How would you like to see when plugins perform actions?  Should it be
configurable, yielding flexibility at the expense of usability?  Should
it just be hard-coded with notes on how to change it (it's ASL-licensed
Python code, so not too hard)?

3) Event handlers are currently non-blocking.  That is, if you choose to
power on a host, the event handler issues the command to the WebReboot
Enterprise and then returns control to Nagios.  The WebReboot Enterprise
then takes care of powering on the host.  This means the script may
return in seconds while it may take orders of magnitude longer for the
host to power up.  The consequence of this is that if your max attempts
is too low or timing is too tight, host checks may continue to execute
while the host is powering up and could put it into an erroneous HARD
DOWN state.

How should this be handled?  Documentation for the user on changing
timing & attempt values?  Or should the event handler insert a
configurable artificial delay?  The downside of the latter being that it
requires fine tuning for each host, as some boot to the OS quickly while
others do not.

Anyway, any help this list could provide would be great.  Ultimately,
the plugin is for Nagios users and we want to make sure we're building
something that meets your expectations.

-- 
Kevin Menard
Servprise International, Inc.
800.832.3823 x308

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