I don't understand the check_by_ssh plugin

[Patrick Morris]

On Fri, 05 Dec 2008, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

> I'm running Nagios 2.10 (the Centos 5.2 packaged version).
> 
> I want to do some small local checks on each of a bunch of real and
> virtual servers, and I really don't want to have to set up Nagios (even a
> minimal install) on each of them just to check uptime, load average, and
> disk space.  (Mostly I'm testing externally visible services on them.)
> 
> The documentation on this plugin doesn't seem to tell me anything about
> what it does with the part of the command output it processes (I see that
> the -S and -E commands let me prune what command output it looks at).
> 
> When I run it from the command line simply, I just get the output of the
> remote command (as if the plugin was just passing it through).  I see that
> I could cause it to produce errors based on how long it takes, but nothing
> about how to actually use the output.
> 
> Then I see some tantalizing hints about "passive" mode, where it writes a
> file that seems to show it doing some parsing and making decisions based
> on the data (in the example).  But I can't get the example to produce a
> non-empty file from the command line.
> 
> So I'm pretty sure I'm missing something about how to use this plugin in
> the first place, or what it's supposed to let me do, or some such.
> 
> Or, if the answer to what I'm trying to do is some other approach
> entirely, I'd settle for enlightenment about that!

In addition to the remote-plugin-execution approachi via something like
NSCA or NRPE, you can probably use SNMP to pull what you're looking for 
using the check_snmp plugin without having to install additional software 
on your monitored hosts.  It involves a bit more research up front to find 
the OIDs you want to watch, but it's pretty flexible and often doesn't
require and special configuration on the monitored machines.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is Sponsored by MIX09, March 18-20, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The future of the web can't happen without you.  Join us at MIX09 to help
pave the way to the Next Web now. Learn more and register at
http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;208669438;13503038;i?http://2009.visitmix.com/
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null