nagios versus big brother - opinions please.

[David Bishop]

> This is like asking which is better vi or emacs. It is basically a
> religious argument. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. If you

100% agreed

> sure. One thing for sure BB does that nagios does not appear to be able to
> do without a lot of monkey motion is sanely monitor hosts that it is normal
> for them to occasionally be disconnected, such as printers or systems
> connected by a dialup modem. BB has a switch you add in the config file and
> magic when the host goes away you get no notifications. When it comes back
> it will automagically notify you if a service is down but the host is up.
> Good luck getting that to work EASILY with nagios. Notice I did not say it

Now, I'm fairly new to nagios (i.e., within the last week), but I'm fairly 
certain that what you're asking for is doable by just removing the 'd' and 
'u' notifications for a host.  I.e., don't notify when a host is unreachable 
or down.  Does that not do what you want?

> could not be done but as best as I can tell it is way more involved than
> just adding the word dialup to a config file. As I said each has its
> advantages and disadvantages. I suspect that here mostly what you will get
> is how great nagios is and how poor BB is. If that is what you want you are
> most likely in the right place. ;)

Well, I use BB at work and nagios at home, (bb for the last three years, about 
500 hosts), and maybe it's just the honeymoon glow, but I'm liking nagios 
better.  I think nagios is *easier* to setup, as it's all config files rather 
than a weird mix of shell scripts and config files with no real distinction*.  
I would assume that this also makes it easier to upgrade (which is always a 
bear with bb).  The only complaint I have with nagios is the web status 
pages, specifically not being able to set the service or host overview as the 
'main' page on login.  It just adds an extra click when I open a new browser 
(nagios being my home page now), and isn't that big of a deal :-)

Anyays, Tom is essentially right.  vi vs. emacs, VMS vs. unix, X vs. console, 
and now bb vs. nagios, they are all religious wars that happen to have a 
right answer if the idiots using the lesser tools would only open their eyes 
and see it! (vim,unix,X w/konsole, and nagios, just fyi).

HTH and HAND!

*easier meaning you follow the instructions and actually read the manual, 
instead of just diving in.  I like the docs very much!

-- 
D.A.Bishop


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