Problems with passive service monitoring and freshness alerting

[O'Brien, Nick]

Hello,

I am using Nagios v2.3 with passive service checking and I am having
problems getting freshness to work in exactly the way I want.

Our external scripts which check the services write to the Nagios
command file every minute. I want Nagios to alert me if there is no
status check for the service after 5 minutes, then every 60 minutes
while the status remains stale.

However very frequently Nagios is alerting me despite a status being
received within the freshness_threshold, e.g.:

[1217966117] EXTERNAL COMMAND:
PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;servera;webservice1;0;Active sessions 3
[1217966165] EXTERNAL COMMAND:
PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;servera;wesbervice1;0;Active sessions 3
[1217966191] Warning: The results of service 'webservice1' on host
'servera' are stale by 50 seconds (threshold=90 seconds).  I'm forcing
an immediate check of the service.
[1217966201] SERVICE NOTIFICATION:
nick;servera;webservice1;CRITICAL;notify-by-email;No servera webservice1
status report inside the freshness interval

I think part of the problem is Nagios is using X in "stale by X seconds"
rather than freshness_threshold or normal_check_interval to run the
freshness check. How do I change X, disable these warnings, and/or at
least get Nagios to run the freshness check at (or  near) the actual
threshold? 

Also I've set max_check_attempts to 7 but Nagios doesn't always seem to
reset the SOFT count back to after a status of the service is received -
possibly a symptom of the same problem.  

I've tried various combination of freshness_threshold,
normal_check_interval, retry_check_interval, and max_check_attempts to
no avail. Anyhow the relevant portions of my Nagios configuration are
below.

Any suggestions about configuring Nagios to do what I want to achieve?


	Thanks,

		Nick.

define service{
        use                             passive-service
        host_name                       servera
        service_description             webservice1
        name                            webservice1
        notification_interval           60
        freshness_threshold             90
        max_check_attempts              7
        check_command                   freshness_alert
        contact_groups                  nickgroup
}

define service{
        name                            passive-service 
        active_checks_enabled           0      
        passive_checks_enabled          1       
        parallelize_check               1       
        obsess_over_service             1       
        check_freshness                 1       
        freshness_threshold             900     
        notifications_enabled           1       
        event_handler_enabled           1       
        flap_detection_enabled          1       
        check_period                    24x7    
        failure_prediction_enabled      1       
        process_perf_data               1       
        retain_status_information       1       
        retain_nonstatus_information    1       
        max_check_attempts              1
        normal_check_interval           5
        retry_check_interval            1
        contact_groups                  admins
        notification_options            w,c,r
        notification_interval           960
        notification_period             24x7
        register                        0
}        }


The freshness_check is

#!/bin/ksh
#
# command to run if not heard from passive check
echo "No $1 $2  status report inside the freshness interval"
exit 2

 



---
Nick O'Brien                         Phone:  +64  9 487 6335 (x4335)
Middleware Hosting (MHOT), NZ Middleware Capability, EDS
Smales Farm Technology Park, Level 3, 74 Taharoto Road
Takapuna, Auckland 0622              Email:  nick.obrien at eds.com

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