Too stupid? Services are available, but nagios reports host to be down!

[Carl Friend]

   Patrick Morris wirtes:

HS> ?? How. Or I'm stupid? How should the host respond to service checks
HS> if it's down and doesn't respond to ping therefore?
>
> It happens.  For example, I have two switches in a strange state
> that I can't ping, but otherwise work fine.

   Technically speaking, all a "ping" tells one these days is that
the path to the host is operational, not necessarily that the host
itself is alive.  I've seen plenty of hosts that have completely
and totally wedged up happily respond to an ICMP ping because the
responsibility for that has been devolved to the NIC.  So, what one
winds up with is a host that's reported as "UP", when in fact all the
services are deader than doornails.

  The anoying thing with the way Nagios handles things in this
regard is if a ping doesn't work (and lots of sites block ICMP
echo requests as part of a "security through obscurity" scheme)
one winds up with a "DOWN" host and lots of "UP" services.  But,
as has been alluded to, getting the logic right can be problematic.
There may be no "right" answer.

+-----------------------------------------+----------------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin)     | Natick, Massachusetts, USA |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast     |                 01760-2098 |
| mailto:carl_friend at mathworks.com        +----------------------------+
| http://users.rcn.com/crfriend/museum    | ICBM: +42:18:00  -71:21:03 |
+-----------------------------------------+----------------------------+

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