Service Configuration Question

[Karl DeBisschop]

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:33:07 +0100
joerg.helmert at aracomp.de wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net 
> > [mailto:nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf 
> > Of Andreas Ericsson
> > Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 9:31 AM
> > To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> > Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Service Configuration Question
> > 
> > 
> > Karl DeBisschop wrote:
> > 
> > > On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 15:39:31 +0100
> > > Andreas Ericsson <ae at op5.se> wrote:
> > 
> > --[ snip ]--
> > 
> > > 
> > >>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.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > That sort of depends - if you are checking the status of snmp,
> > > then yes. But say you are trying to find out if a disk is full, 
> > whether or 
> > > not snmp is running has very little to do with whether the disk is
> > > 
> > > full
> > > 
> > I totally disagree. If the plugin fetches disk status input from 
> > nsclient or nrpe (or snmp, for that matter) and can't get it, it's a
> > 
> > critical error (service not running).
> > If it fetches it from the LOCAL server and can't get it, then 
> > it's most 
> > likely due to filesystem error (or a plugin bug, which we have to 
> > disregard for the sake of this discussion), which is 
> > definitely critical.
> > 
> I agree to Andreas.
> I use monitoring to know everything is ok.
> If a plugin is not able to do its work, I do not know whats going on.
> So that is CRITICAL for me.
> 
> The way the plugin gets its data doesn't play a role for me.
> (local/snmp/nrpe/nsca/ssh or whatever...)
> 
> In above scenario you of course do not know if diskstate is ok or not,
> if snmp fails.
> But if snmp fails, something is wrong and that is CRITICAL.

Then you want to configure nagios to notify you on UNKNOWN. End of
story.

If I change the plugin to report CRITICAL, those who use the current
distinction lose information as a result. For instance, you might very
reasonably have a nagios admin teams fix or at least diagnose the state
unknown, whereas a local admin would deal with the disk full. (Though
I'm not sure how easy this would be in nagios as it stands, ath least
without some addin mail agent)

OOTH, I can understand the desire for a distinction between a
plugin syntax error and the UNKNOWN state. I would be happy to code tha
into the plugins IF Ethan felt he wanted to honor that disctinction in
Nagios.

--
Karl


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