IPv6 support

[Andreas Ericsson]

On 06/10/2011 01:26 PM, Michael Friedrich wrote:
> Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>> Not really. You can still achieve the exact same functionality with
>> custom variables. What Michael has done is to make one such custom
>> variable "official", which breaks the ABI. He still has to use special
>> plugins to check both ip4 and ip6 addresses at the same time, which is
>> why I think it's quite stupid.
> 
> the dual check affinity only takes place in the host checking currently
> (where it does make sense to combine it with check_multi or any other
> conditional check wrapper). for other purposes you can still define your
> own checks and services, especially tagged as "PING4" and "PING6" e.g. -
> but no need to play around with "get the 4 or 6 address from somewhere
> for the commandline, but just take the §HOSTADRESS(6)$ macros and be
> happy as it was demanded.
> 
> don't get me wrong, i know that abi changes and such make developer's
> going mad. but from a users perspective this was one of the things
> demanded the most. at least within the range of those sysadmins already
> running ipv4 and ipv6 in their productive environments. even more, those
> virtual appliances and clustered setups would need an even more in deep
> rewrite, but that's another story (service sets might be a good attempt
> for that).
> 

Still really nothing for the core to take care of.

>> You can, but with custom variables. How many "official" addresses should
>> Nagios support? 3? 5? Soon we'll run into someone who wants more than
>> that, and then we're left with breaking the ABI again. And again. And
>> again. Breaking the ABI causes major headaches for module developers and
>> users. Custom variables don't break the ABI and causes minor headaches
>> for people with complex environments, who hopefully get paid quite a
>> lot to handle such complexities in an elegant way. Nagios makes that
>> possible, while making the normal case (ip4 *or* ip6) possible.
> 
> using custom variables within the default nagios gui remains impossible
> to be shown and used without hacking c code. making it available would
> either cost to allow custom variables to be shown (what regex might be
> good to show only those? is it really custom then? etc) rather than just
> supporting the address6 host attribute - which remains implemented by a
> community members, tested by various and demanded by lots of.
> 

So give _address6 official status *in the ui*. Or make a config item
that lets users specify which custom variables to show in the UI. Or
show all of them by default. That's a change that actually makes sense,
would have been far less intrusive and would have made very nearly
everyone happy (especially the "configure which you want to see", with
a general switch to show all and then include/exclude parameters to
filter passwords and whatnot out of the UI). Wasn't that the real
reason behind the patches in the first place? That's at least the only
real unique benefit from this over using custom vars.

The problem here is actually laziness and possibly poor maintenance.
When presented with the patch, you need to ask the submitter; "What
purpose does this patch serve and why is it so generally important
that we have to break the ABI?" Given some prodding, you would have
found out that the user really just wants to see a special custom
variable in the web-interface. Achieving that is basically peanuts,
given half a day and a junior coder fresh out of kindergarten, so
it's quite likely the submitter could have been persuaded to rewrite
the patch like that so it would have been easy to maintain it. It
would also have made it acceptable in the Nagios core and would have
made life easier for those broker module authors that actually care
about supporting Icinga and for the users that use modules with it.

That turned a bit harsh there. Sorry about that.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.

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