Service Configuration Question

Andreas Ericsson ae at op5.se
Tue Mar 23 15:39:31 CET 2004


You misread me.
Ofcourse threshhold values should be accepted, and they are.

Michael Eck wrote:
> Unless my source is not authoritative in this matter, plugin return 
> codes can also be used to communicate to Nagios when a value has 
> surpassed a certain threshold. See the Nagios plug-in development 
> guidelines for more information on what I'm talking about 
> (http://nagiosplug.sourceforge.net/developer-guidelines.html).
> 
You misread me. What I said was that a plugin shouldn't return UNKNOWN 
unless the user has passed it bad arguments or something isn't installed 
properly (file missing, et al).

> Further, checking an SNMP gauge and reporting OK merely on the condition 
> that proper parameters were passed to the plugin and some value was 
> received by the check would make for a totally worthless checking logic. 
Again, that's not what I said. But if the plugin can't fetch any data at 
ALL (snmpget times out), it's supposed to return CRITICAL and not UNKNOWN.

> How would Nagios know the difference between an acceptable and 
> unacceptable value? The plugin behavior that you describe makes sense 
> for services like SMTP, HTTP, etc., when a timeout could be either a 
> service or a host problem (or something in between) but doesn't seem 
> appropriate for checking things like used disk space, temperature, or 
> some other gauge type value.
> 
Read above.

> Here's a cut of the table about which I wrote from the guidelines. This 
> is the understanding that I have of the return codes:
> *Numeric Value Service Status Status Description
> 
> *0 - OK - The plugin was able to check the service and it appeared to be 
> functioning properly
> 
> 1 - Warning -The plugin was able to check the service, but it appeared 
> to be above some "warning" threshold or did not appear to be working 
> properly
> 
> 2 - Critical - The plugin detected that either the service was not 
> running or it was above some "critical" threshold
> 
My point exactly. If snmpd (or SNMP.exe in case of M$) isn't running, or 
isn't responding within the specified timeout, it should be considered a 
critical error, since the service fails to respond.

> 3 - Unknown - Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the plugin 
> or the plugin was unable to check the status of the given hosts/service
> On Mar 22, 2004, at 4:50 PM, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> 
This opens up the field for discussions. If a service isn't answering, 
should the plugin decide it wasn't able to check the value and return 
UNKNOWN, or should it assume the service isn't running and return CRITICAL?

Perhaps a new return value (USER_ERROR) should be defined?

>     Service checks that aren't subject to user-error should return
>     critical when experiencing network problems (no data received, for
>     instance).
>     UNKNOWN should only be returned when bad parameters have been passed
>     to the plugin, or when the files or directories the plugin depends
>     on are missing.
> 
>     Because of a lot of the plugin authors fail to conform to that
>     standard, nagios has a hard time doing The Right Thing and keeping
>     users happy at the same time.
> 
>     Michael Eck wrote:
> 
>         Is there any way to configure a service so that Nagios only
>         performs the host check when a particular non-OK state is
>         returned by the service check? For example, I have a service
>         check that, when in a critical or warning state, the host is
>         necessarily up (it's an SNMP value), but when in an unknown
>         state the host may be down. My problem is that Nagios is
>         performing too many host checks on hosts that are clearly up but
>         in a non-OK state. I'm either missing something in the check
>         logic, missing a configuration directive, or Nagios can't do this.
>         Thanks for the help.
>         ----
>         Michael Eck
>         Chilitech Internet Solutions
>         Network Operations Center
>         570-323-2166
>         http://www.chilitech.net
>         -------------------------------------------------------
>         This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
>         Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and
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>         _______________________________________________
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>         ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS
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> 
> 
>     -- 
>     Mvh / Best regards
>     Sourcerer / Andreas Ericsson
>     OP5 AB
>     +46 (0)733 709032
>     andreas.ericsson at op5.se
> 
> 
>     -------------------------------------------------------
>     This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
>     Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
>     GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
>     administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
>     _______________________________________________
>     Nagios-users mailing list
>     Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
>     https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
>     ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when
>     reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk
>     being sent to /dev/null
> 
> ----
> Michael Eck
> Chilitech Internet Solutions
> Network Operations Center
> 570-323-2166
> http://www.chilitech.net
> 

-- 
Mvh / Best regards
Sourcerer / Andreas Ericsson
OP5 AB
+46 (0)733 709032
andreas.ericsson at op5.se


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by: IBM Linux Tutorials
Free Linux tutorial presented by Daniel Robbins, President and CEO of
GenToo technologies. Learn everything from fundamentals to system
administration.http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=1470&alloc_id=3638&op=click
_______________________________________________
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