Hi List, in my last confusing topic I tried to explain a problem I've got with configuration distribution design with nagios distributed monitoring. I hope to clarify this topic and present a solution. It would be nice if you can comment this again. Actual situation with Nagios 3.x: If I would make my life easier with configuring nagios for my distributed system I would define some templates to control the behavior on the master or on the slave. f.e. on the slave a template would define a normal check_command, but no freshness options. on the master server the same template name would result in some other check_command inclusive freshness options and so on. With this possibility the service definitions on master _and_ on slave servers would be identically but the different templates on both sides would control "live checking" or "freshness checking". But for this it should be possible that a template made directive should be able to override a directive from the service definition. I know that the default behavior is the other direction (template -> service, but service directives are last significant). Since Nagios 3.x allows a template addition through the "+" notation my thoughts goes in this direction. What would be if you were allowed to inject a special character to your template to override a service definition (for example). With attached patch I got exactly this behavior. Thanks Mark -- Mark Eisenblätter Geissendoerfer & Leschinsky GmbH <a href="http://www.gl-sytemhaus.de">www.gl-sytemhaus.de</a>