WMI's

[Marc Powell]

On Mar 13, 2009, at 7:36 AM, Mark Weaver wrote:

Just a couple of $.02us, please read in courteous, matter-of-fact tone  
--

> Andreas, you're making my head hurt! ;) I've been using (learning)
> Nagios now for about a week now and haven't encountered anything with
> such a vertical learning curve like this since I started learning  
> Linux
> in 1996.

Heh, the learning curve is not nearly so steep as say Slackware back  
in those days... Nagios is a lot like linux though; it's just a base  
platform. How you implement it, what you monitor with it and how you  
do so is going to greatly depend on what you want to get out of it and  
your environment. While there is a lot of commonality between users,  
there's also a lot of difference and flexibility to monitor things any  
way you like. If it can be run from the command line, it can be turned  
into a plugin generally.

> That being said the documentation which comes with Nagios seriously  
> sucks until you begin to
> get on to the Nagios way of doing things.

... one of the reasons I recommend reading the documentation, then the  
sample config files, then the documentation again. IMHO, the  
documentation is actually very good and covers most common concepts  
and scenarios, either very specifically or generally. ~90% of the time  
I respond to a question, I'm looking at the documentation that answers  
it.


> So for you to curtly suggest that all can easily be found googling  
> as an
> answer to this question is, well... just too easy. Either you don't
> actually know or you don't feel like telling.

I'm quite certain he knows, or has heard of people doing it, and  
believes that the answers you seek are easily found. I believe that  
you might not yet know the questions to ask google though because you  
don't yet understand the concepts.

> I totally understand
> though because I suspect you yourself have worked very hard getting to
> know and work with Nagios and have put quite a bit of time into the
> gaining the experience you now possess, but throwing us noobs a bone
> isn't really asking too much is it?
>
> Bone == link to information
> slap in one's face == go google it...

I don't think that expecting you to figure out that you should google  
for 'nagios wmi' is too much to expect, since that was your goal and  
what he pointed you to do. In your question, you made an assumption  
about a tool (check_nt) that was incorrect. The documentation for that  
tool would have told you it was incorrect by omission but he pointed  
it out and told you there were other tools available that might do  
what you need. There are *many* nagios plugins available created by  
many people. It's not possible to know them all or where they are  
located, hence the google recommendation. He can not be expected to do  
that kind of research for you in the same way that a kernel developer  
can't be expected to tell you which web server to install and how to  
use it.

> Yeah... we can find the stuff we need by googling for it, but wouldn't
> it be nice if the documentation were a lot more robust and contained  
> in
> a wiki somewhere? I have yet to find one for Nagios.

There's one linked directly from the Documentation page at http://www.nagios.org 
. http://www.nagiosexchange.org is another, somewhat different but  
well known community site.


> As I said, I do understand that you and others have invested a great
> deal of time and effort into learning Nagios and how to work it, but  
> if
> you don't want to share whats locked away in your brains then why even
> respond to the post?

Because posters and responders have unknown levels of knowledge? He  
provided information based on an expectation that you have a higher  
level of knowledge. That information would have been quite sufficient  
for many people. You have two possible paths in a case like that, you  
either try to figure out what he means or you ignore it and wait for  
someone else to answer at a level you understand. If you get no  
further answers that either indicates most people think it's  
sufficient, you didn't ask the right question or you didn't give the  
right information. If you're fortunate, you may even have people tell  
you that. He answered in a manner that is comfortable to him and meets  
his expectations of the questioner. We're all self-taught nagios  
users; if we can do it, so can you.

> Google What for pete's sake?

generally, 'nagios check <whatever>' will provide resources for  
checking most anything someone's tried to monitor. You'll either find  
plugins, web pages or list archives.

> Thank you for you kind attention and for putting up with this petulant
> Nagios Newbie.

Heh, you'll get there ;)

--
Marc


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