Stuck on NRPE for OS X Server

[Allan Clark]

Reply is bottom-posted.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 16:57, Andrew Davis <nccomp at gmail.com> wrote:

>  If I'm reading this correctly, the line about "NRPE daemon cannot be run
> as user/group root!" is directly from the source code of NRPE. Its not an
> xinetd thing. I've confirmed that xinetd is running and listening on port
> 5666. I tried changing the owner/group from nobody:nobody to another
> unprivileged user, but it didn't work. Same results. It appears that despite
> my configuring the /etc/nagios/nrpe.cfg and the /etc/xinetd.d/nrpe files to
> use a user other than root, it still tries to start it as the root user and
> thus when an incoming connection comes in, it gives the "NRPE daemon cannot
> be run as user/group root!" error. Any thoughts on how to rectify this?
> Since NRPE is working fine on Linux, is this just a Mac OS X thing? Any help
> would be immensely appreciated.
>
> AD
>
>
> Andrew Davis wrote:
>
> FYI: /var/log/system.log on the client shows:
>
> Mar 18 16:08:07 shu xinetd[29066]: START: nrpe pid=557 from=10.1.1.170
> Mar 18 16:08:07 shu nrpe[557]: Error: NRPE daemon cannot be run as
> user/group root!
>
> whether I do the default test (with SSL) or use the -n flag to test w/o
> SSL. The odd thing is that the nrpe config in /etc/xinetd.d is set to run as
> nobody:nobody and /etc/nagios/nrpe.cfg is owned by nobody:nobody. Only
> /usr/local/sbin/nrpe is owned by root (as it should be), but is also set to
> 755 perms. I've compared to a Linux box I have with NRPE and xinetd working
> properly and the permissions are identical.
>
> I'm stumped...
>
> Andrew Davis wrote:
>
> I have two Mac OS X servers, one running 10.3, the other running 10.4.
> Neither can be upgraded to 10.5 due to third party s/w constraints. Both are
> PPC based XServe's.
>
> Trying to compile nrpe with:
>
> ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc/nagios --enable-ssl
>
> Initially, I got the "cannot find ssl libraries" error:
>
> ~
> checking for SSL headers... SSL headers found in /usr/local/ssl
> checking for SSL libraries... configure: error: Cannot find ssl libraries
>
> I downloaded the latest openssl and built it with:
>
> ./config --prefix=/usr/local shared --openssldir=/usr/local/openssl
> make
> make test
> make install
>
> I then had to edit ~/src/nrpe/configure and change the reference from
> libssl.so to libssl.dylib
>
> After that, nrpe compiled cleanly and I was able to move ~src/nrpe/src/nrpe
> to /usr/local/sbin and start xinetd up. I've confirmed that port 5666 is
> open and xinetd is running:
>
> /usr/local/src/nrpe-2.12/src root# ps waux|grep xinet|grep -v greproot
> 29066   0.0 -0.0    27484    308  ??  Ss    3:53PM   0:00.02
> /usr/sbin/xinetd -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid -stayalive
> /usr/local/src/nrpe-2.12/src root# netstat -an|grep 5666tcp4       0
> 0  *.5666                 *.*                    LISTEN
>
> However, when connecting from the remote server, I get:
>
> /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_nrpe -H host.mydomain.org
> CHECK_NRPE: Error - Could not complete SSL handshake.
>
> The same test but w/o SSL gives yields:
>
> [nagios at nephilim src]$ /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_nrpe -n -H
> host.mydomain.org
> CHECK_NRPE: Received 0 bytes from daemon.  Check the remote server logs for
> error messages.
>
> So two questions:
>
> 1) I'm a UNIX guy, but obviously Mac's are A) different and B) a tad
> different being BSD-based. So what's the proper way to stop/restart the
> xinetd daemon?
> 2) Any thoughts on SSL handshake error? I've googled it, but I'm not
> getting very far.
>
> Anyone have a step-by-step for compiling nagios plugins and NRPE from
> source on OS X 10.x (specifically 10.3 and 10.4)? I'm using NRPE for all
> other internal hosts, so I prefer to use it for the Mac's too. I know I
> could do it via check_by_ssh and get around this, but I prefer to use NRPE
> if I can.
>
> --
>
>
On a Mac, your xinetd is a bolt-on over the launchd that's there by default;
you've obviously got it running.  Since you're in /etc/xinetd.d/<something>,
you need to cnfigure a different username via xinetd's config.  Look for a
/etc/xinetd.d/nrpe file, or similar, containing the config for your nrpe
service.  I tend to grep for the port number in order to find the file.
Remember to check /local/*

The time service has an example with juicy comments:


service time
{
# This is for quick on or off of the service
        disable         = yes
...
...
# External services must fill out the following
#       user            =
#       group           =
...
...
}


Take a look there, see if you can choose a better username and/or group and
if your port of xinetd honours it.  I don't know if you have a nrpe user, or
run it as nobody.

A better option would be a proper launchd config, allowing you to shutdown
xinetd if you're installing it there for this purpose only, but then it's a
Mac-only thing, and would be more difficult to maintain for non-Mac people.

Allan
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