Nagios external commands (2)

[Andreas Ericsson]

I'm a bit confused about this. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what
it is you want to achieve.

Is it 

a) To get Nagios to understand XML commands?

b) To get Nagios to be able to tell the world about what external commands
it groks through some external means (the XML-file, fe)?

Tobias Mucke wrote:
> Hi Nagios developers, hi Ethan,
> 
> I am refering to my first post concerning this topic in June this
> year. Now I have a draft of a proposal for a XML file describing the
> Nagios external commands. It is not complete yet because I just worked
> up to the DISABLE commands.
> 

I'm guessing 'b' then.

> I would like to see some coments on it to understand if this approach
> will be helpful.
> 
> Next steps would than be:
> 
> - define the remaining commands
> - write a XML schema for it
> - write a XSLT file to get a documentation of external commands out of
> this XML file
> 
> There are more than one applications for it. I am thinking of an CLI
> to the external command file, an automatism to generate a
> documentation  about external commands supported and maybe a NEB
> module to pass external commands to Nagios. What do you think about a
> XML-RPC interface?
> 

I think the XML overhead will be ugly for something like that. Not only
codewise, but you'll most likely double or triple the amount of data
required to read, so you'll have to invent something else than the FIFO
for it, which is already struggling with the extensive output sometimes
passed in passive service checks. A socket might do nicely.

Imo, it would be better to be able to export the internal nagios state
in some XML-ish way, but that can be done without fiddling with NEB-modules.

> By the way I found some little typos / issues in the external command
> documentation.
> 
> - At DISABLE_HOST_SVC_CHECKS you talk about "Enables" this should read
> "Disables".
> - From the description of CHANGE_SVC_CHECK_TIMERPERIOD it gets not
> clear to me what this command is used for. Description seems very
> similar to CHANGE_SVC_CHECK_TIMEPERIOD command.
> - CHANGE_HOST_CHECK_TIMEPERIOD exists twice, second one should be
> called CHANGE_HOST_CHECK_TIMERPERIOD
> - CHANGE_RETRY_HOST_CHECK_INTERVAL does not need the option
> service_description, right?
> 

I'm sure patches are welcome :)

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

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