Nagios Start-up Failure

[Wheeler, Jonathan (STFC,RAL,ESC)]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kevin Keane [mailto:subscription at kkeane.com]
> Sent: 28 August 2009 08:28
> Cc: Nagios User list
> Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios Start-up Failure
> 
> Wheeler, Jonathan (STFC,RAL,ESC) wrote:
(snip)
> >
> > I have not been following this thread, but one reason that Nagios
fails
> > at the very end of its start-up is if the command pipe file (ours is
in
> > /var/log/nagios/rw/nagios.cmd - defined by parameter command_file in
the
> > main Nagios configuration file) exists as a file rather than a pipe.
On
> > our installation this can occur during Nagios start-up as some of
our
> > procedures, running from a cron job, write directly to the command
pipe
> > and will create it as a standard file if it does not exist.  The
> > solution is to delete the file and restart the Nagios process.
> >
> Interesting observation! I haven't tried it, but one possible way to
> address this is by putting the command pipe file into a directory that
> is read-only to everybody but user Nagios. As long as the cron jobs
run
> as a different user (and not as user root, who can always write
> anywhere), they would not be able to create ordinary files in that
> directory, but they would still be able to access the pipe once Nagios
> creates it.

Not at straightforward as that.  The rw directory and the command pipe
are owned by nagios:HTTPUSER (where HTTPUSER might be http or apache)
because the command pipe is written by the nsca and nrpe daemons as well
as the web interface; therefore the cron job runs as userid nagios (not
root).

Jonathan Wheeler 
e-Science Centre 
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
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