I would expect Nagios to return -1, or 3 for "system14;UP;HARD;1;(No output!)"

[Michael Alger]

Lee Fitz wrote:
>> ...check_ping plugin is not producing any output
>>     
> right - this is the standard plugin which is clearly encountering
>  some kind of weird condition as the system being monitored restarts.
>
>   
>> ...Basically, the plugin shouldn't be returning 0 unless the host is up.
>>     
> right - 'standard plugin', anyway Nagios is creating the No output!
>  message - this is why I believe it should set the state to UNKNOWN
>  (or invent a new state) because it definitely causing the wrong
>  notification to be sent (ie system up)
>
>
> Unless anyone as an idea about how I can avoid the condition or
>   ignore the result I probably will submit a bug report.
>   

Nagios isn't supposed to do anything with the plugin output. That's 
purely for human consumption. Replacing blank output with the string 
"(No output!)" seems reasonable since it's more obvious to a human that 
the plugin didn't produce any output than a blank string is (and blank 
strings might confuse parts of Nagios, the CGIs, or user scripts).

I think even the standard plugins are part of the nagiosplug project, so 
you might want to follow this up on their mailing lists to see if you 
can work out why it's returning a false "host is up" status to Nagios 
without producing any output.

(Apologies if you've already done this - I'm not on that list, but I 
didn't see any other replies to your email.)


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