NSCA using PROCESS_FILE

[Hendrik Baecker]

Hi List,

interesting that several people have the same thought about processing
performance data.

A few weeks ago I posted to this list to discuss the best way to handle
perfdata processing.
Since we all know that executing some "*_perfdata_command" within nagios
will get us into latency trouble if we have more than x thousand services.

The thought of using a fifo to just let nagios write some data into a
"simple" filedescriptor should solve this issue, I think.

But I have some headache to create that pipe from an "external" process.

What about these thoughts:

1. What happens when the external Daemon crashes and the pipe will be
erased? Does is hurts nagios? Will nagios creates a regulary file to
keep on writing to this? Sounds like data loss doesn't it?
2. A collegue of mine told me that there are some effects with perl
created pipes that might cause some crashes to both processes when the
pipe dies... It would be worse if the perl daemon crashes, erase the
pipe (or something similar) and nagios crashes cause of missing it??

Since Nagios 3 is coming up, what would be about a new feature to create
a new config option, that creates a "outgoing" pipe?

Something like this ones for a regular file:

host_perfdata_file=/tmp/host-perfdata
service_perfdata_file=/tmp/service-perfdata

and this:

host_perfdata_pipe=/tmp/host-perfdata.fifo
service_perfdata_pipe=/tmp/service-perfdata.fifo

to let nagios create that pipe and handle it.

In this way, we were able to control the data running in that pipe
through the known "data_file_templates" or similar. Nagios watches over
this pipe an any external Daemon / Script / Whatever might read out of
it like the external command pipe but in the other direction.

IMHO this might be cleaner as writing some script daemons, cause nagios
controls this pipe.
When nagios is alive, the pipe is alive and doesn't care about the
outside world.

Just my 2 cents.

Kind regards,
Hendrik


Thomas Guyot-Sionnest schrieb:
>
> Guys,
>
> Anyone looked at / tried my OCHP/OCSP Perl daemons? (Sent in another
> thread, "Piped OCHP/OCSP daemon")
>
> I haven't had time to set up a full testing env yet (Not only I need
> to setup a master and slave with real checks... I never even touched
> OCHP/OCSP!). I fixed a trivial bug that was from the original
> PerfDaemon code... I'll post an updated version soon...
>
> I tested performance of it and with -r1 and it could eat over one
> *million* commands (120+ MB of text) in just over 5 seconds (the
> children would take some time to digest that much data though if they
> were not piping it trough a plain 'cat', i.e. send it over the network
> with send_nsca). I verified the integrity of that 120+ MB chunk of
> data after going trough the daemon and it matched.
>
>
> Ethan, is this daemon suitable for your HOWTO (I know you asked for
> something different but I believe this daemon does the job much better
> than a logrotate/cron job). Which format do you want your HOWTO
> written in? SGML? ASCII? Do you have a Template?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Thomas
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagios-devel-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net on behalf of Gerd Mueller
> Sent: Fri 23-Feb-07 5:08
> To: Nagios Developers List
> Subject: Re: [Nagios-devel] NSCA using PROCESS_FILE
>
> > If someone else don't beat me up on time I'll see if I have time for
> that in
> > the upcoming days.
>
> At least I wouldn't :-)
>
> > However I disagree with the way of doing it.
>
> Me, too. Since our masters are in charge of sending notifications,
> graphing charts, ... We really need nearly real time handling of
> checkresults.  
>
> > I'd rather have nagios write to
> > a pipe (We already do this succesfully to pipe performance data into
> cacti;
>
> We did this for the nagiosgrapher as well.
>
>
> Gerd
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to
> share your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
> <http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV>
> _______________________________________________
> Nagios-devel mailing list
> Nagios-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-devel
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Nagios-devel mailing list
> Nagios-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-devel
>   


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your
opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash
http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV