Changing config files while nagios is running causes webinterface to mess up

[Raphael Mueller]

Dear all,

currently, I often change the configuration files of Nagios (Ver. 1.1) 
because we get a lot of new equipment these days.
If I change the config files while Nagios is running, the Nagios web 
page starts to mess up, e.g. several devices disappear.

My question: Am I doing something against the good practices if I edit 
the config files without stopping the Nagios service first?

I don't understand too much about the architecture of Nagios, but 
according to chapter "Stopping And Restarting Nagios" of the online 
documentation
    http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/1_0/stoprestart.html
Nagios should only check the config files and (re)read them if I start, 
restart or reload the service.
So, maybe, it's just the web interface which gets confused about my 
config changes?

Of course, I could use a second set of config files to work on. Then, I 
would write a script which checks the copied set of config files, stops 
the service, copies them to the directory used by Nagios and start the 
service again....

Maybe, I'm just thinking to far or there is a know workaround... any 
help is appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Raphael


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