Nagios Configured by LDAP

[Andreas Ericsson]

Allan Clark wrote:
> Hi;
> In my company, we have a complex series of firewalled zones within each
> datacenter.  We also intend to use Nagios from one datacenter to check
> another's external services.  We use LDAP extensively, and deploy everything
> -- including Nagios -- with a redundant.
> 
> I've done some initial work to configure Nagios using LDAP based on
> current-CVS Nagios-3.0.1.
> 
> The only past work towards this that I found was an email from Benoit
> Mortier [1], who I have contacted and he's interested in providing test
> data.  The edits are in base/config.c, base/nagios.c, and
> xdata/xoddefault.c.  I'm writing to:
> 

I advise against this in the strongest possible terms. You can (and
should) use a NEB-module for this instead of modifying the core
directly. NEB-modules can do very nearly everything that the core
code can do (including registering objects) but do not add any
external dependencies to the nagios core.

Since, by the look of the wiki (which I didn't examine too closely),
you've already done the heavy lifting, it shouldn't be too difficult
to lift it out and make a NEB-module of the code instead. I'll help
you with that, but I'll fight you ever step of the way if you want
to add in-core LDAP support for Nagios.

The reason I don't like to see such things in the core are multiple:
1. It adds extra dependencies.
2. It adds to the maintenance burden.
3. If your code is poorly designed you can potentially wreak cause
   pandemonium for a multitude of people.
4. Very few people want to store their configuration in LDAP (this
   is a guess based on the number of request for LDAP-ish features
   I've seen).


> 1) advertise the short writeup:
> http://www.nagioscommunity.org/wiki/index.php/LDAP-Configured_Nagios
> 2) poll interest from other users who want to beta-test and argue over
> schema
> 3) verify that I'm not wasting my time.
> 

You're not wasting your time. You've just started veering off in the
wrong direction. I'd suggest you remedy this by re-writing your LDAP
thing as a NEB-module and then promote that as a separate project.

If you post patches, I may be able to help you with the conversion. I
believe it would be a great addition to Nagios, but it doesn't belong
in the core.

Cheers

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

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