[Nagiosplug-help] Trouble installing plugins - not templatedperhaps?

[Dag Wieers]

On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Peter Kiem wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> > What was wrong with the initial Nagios file ? I've set up 3 nagios servers
> > using these packages without any need to convert anything. Did you need
> > something from the nagios-plugins commands.cfg ?
> 
> Packages I have installed:
> nagios-1.1-3.dag.rh73
> nagios-plugins-1.3.1-2.dag.rh73
> 
> OK the problems are as I see it:
> 1. After installing the plugins package you still need to change the
> nagios.cfg file to tell it where the plugins are.  It would be far better
> if after installing the plugins package it copied the command.cfg into
> /etc/nagios and changed your nagios.cfg file to load that file.

No, the default configuration from Nagios includes 
/etc/nagios/checkcommands.cfg. It may not have all plugins defined but 
since the plugins are in a seperate package (that may not come from my 
website) I can't expect them to be dependend from another package.


> 2. The /usr/share/doc/nagios-plugins-1.3.1/command.cfg file from the
> plugins package is the old non-template format and nagios from the package
> above complained about syntax errors in the command.cfg file and refused
> to run.

The nagios-plugins project should ship an updated one then. I don't use 
that one as you'll have to change most of the plugins anyway to fit your 
installation. It may be worthwhile though to have a list of tweaked 
commands/plugins added to the default checkcommands.cfg.


> 3. I had to run convertcfg on the
> /usr/share/doc/nagios-plugins-1.3.1/command.cfg file to convert it to the
> template format and then remove the duplicate entries between command.cfg
> and misccommands.cfg for the notify methods.

See 2. I've added the commands.cfg to the docdir just for reference. If 
you use it, you're on your own. The upstream nagios distribution could 
ship with more or better checkcommands.cfg and misccommands.cfg.


> > Apart from the fact that I think the default Nagios files are badly
> > structured (and the config-files are far from obvious), they do work with
> > only a minimum of customization.
> 
> I had to do a LOT of customisation to get this to run under Red Hat 7.3
> Although I understand Nagios is not for the novice users, these problems
> with the plugins proved quite challenging to get it running!

What is a lot of customisation ? Sure you have to add you 
network(-topology) and sure you have to define and tweak the plugins you 
want to use (if you've done it once, you might copy&paste stuff). But 
apart from the things that are really specific to your setup, the packages 
work out of the box.

If you have improvements to the default config-files, I suggest you give 
feedback to the nagios developers so your changes are added to the next 
release.

--   dag wieers,  dag at wieers.com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]