FAQ: Passive host checks?

[Jason Marshall]

> Passive *service* checks are well documented; passive *host* checks
> are not.

There are no passive host checks.  I tried that already, and it always
uses the active method, and ignores passive updates (which are, granted,
documented as service check updates).

I, too, would like a way to monitor hosts that isn't based on Nagios's
large-grain checking granularity.  I can tell within 2 seconds if a router
that lots of other hosts are dependent upon are down -- I don't want the
remote hosts being checked for up to a full minute (and failing, thereby
alerting me) when it's really the router that'd down.  If I could tell
nagios (passively) within 2 seconds of the incident that the router is
down, I'd avoid a lot of spurious alerts...

> My current workaround is to define a service called ALIVE and
> report passive service checks for that service, but that is not
> 100% satisfying.

I agree.  I haven't looked at the part of the code that would make passive
host checks possible, but it seems like it could be a major undertaking...
And there could be underlying reasons why such a check would be a bad
thing...

---
Jason Marshall, Unix Geek, Kelman Technologies, Inc., Calgary, AB, Canada.

  From a Sun Microsystems bug report (#4102680):
    "Workaround: don't pound on the mouse like a wild monkey."

  "I have great faith in fools: 
     Self confidence my friends call it."  -Edgar Allan Poe




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