Nagios themes.

[Paul L. Allen]

Petrucci, Joseph writes: 

> Good observation on Paul, BUT the discussion groups are a lot of the
> times the first place people look in eveluating a product,

They are the FIRST place people look?  All the competent people I have
encountered look first at the brief product description to see if it is
even CLOSE to what they're after.  If it is they then read (or at least
skim) the documentation.  If it still looks as though it might do the job
they download it and install it on a test box and if it does what they
want they don't need to do anything else.  If the installation fails,
or they can't figure out how to make specific features work, or they can't
determine if something works how the documentation implies it should,
then they read the documentation more thoroughly.  If the documentation
doesn't help they try the FAQ.  If the FAQ doesn't help they google for an
answer.  If google doesn't help they have a quick look through the source 
code.  If the source code doesn't help they search the mailing list
archives. 

Only AFTER all of those fail to give the required answer do COMPETENT
people consider asking on the mailing list to see if they've misunderstood
something, or if the product simply isn't up to the job it was supposed to
be able to do, or to see if anybody knows an answer. 

Here's an example of the sort of question a competent person might ask: 

   I want to monitor Windows Active Directory.  I've looked at all the
   official plugins and the contributed plugins but there's nothing.  I've
   googled for it and I've searched the list archives but not found
   anything.  I can use check_tcp to establish if something is listening
   on the Kerberos, Kerberos password, LDAP and MS Directory Service ports
   but I know only too well that computers can do a three-way handshake
   that satisfies check_tcp but be unable to respond to real queries.
   I can use check_ldap for the LDAP service but that still leaves the
   other three without real checks.  Does anybody have anything that will
   do sensible checks on all four services and integrate the answers from
   each so that the plugin can report the status of Active Directory as
   a whole rather than the status of four individual services (which
   would still not guarantee that the responses from each of the four
   services is both consistent and correct for the domain/workgroup in
   question). If not, is anybody working on such a plugin? 

   I have a client with Active Directory that they would like us to
   monitor but the only info I can get on what it does is from unhelpful
   Microsoft documentation and tcpdump output.  So if nobody is working
   on a plugin but there is somebody out there who knows more about
   Active Directory than I do but not about writing plugins then please
   contact me and perhaps between us we can come up with something that
   will do what is required. 

That's not a hypothetical question.  I really would like to monitor
Active Directory.  The time it would take me to figure out the intricacies
of the protocols is more than the client is willing to pay (the client
thinks a ping check of the machine in question is a good test) but I'd
like to do the job right.  So if anyone has an intricate knowledge
of the protocols but knows nothing about writing plugins then mail me. 

And here's the sort of question an incompetent person would ask: 

   I made some changes to my configuration and restarted Nagios and now
   every time I refresh the web page services appear and disappear. 

Granted that is a bug in the Nagios 1.x startup script, but it is a
DOCUMENTED bug.  It's in the FAQ.  It could (and perhaps should) be
more prominently documented, but it's documented.  It's not a question
anyone who should be let near the root login of a linux server should be
asking on the mailing list.  And if you disagree with me on that one, then
read <URL: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html >. 

> to see what type of expertise is out there,

Dunno about you, but if I were looking for an expert I'd go by my
perception of the quality and range of the answers.  If there's a dickhead
asking stupid questions or giving obviosly wrong answers I don't consider
him an expert.  If somebody is giving good answers to a wide range of
questions I consider him an expert.  And if there are people having
side-arguments I'm not interested in I skip those posts in order to
evaluate their other posts and the posts of other people.  But if I
really wanted to pay for somebody to do an installation or configuration
for me I would FIRST look at the development team to see if any of them do
contract work on Nagios (they do). 

> what problems people are getting

These days mailing list archives will give a very misleading impression
because lazy, incompetent people use the mailing list as a first resort
for dealing with the slightest problem - the sort of problem they would
not have had if they had read the documentation.  So scratch that as a
means of evaluating the product: all you're evaluating is how many morons
don't bother to read the documentation.  That is especially true in this
list where the boss of a Windows shop has the idea of getting one of his
Microsoft-certified point-and-click-monkeys to install Linux and Nagios
and said monkey asks basic questions about linux here.  After they've
progressed from "how do I unpack the source without Winzip" it goes
rapidly downhill.  And there are a lot of those people these days.  If you
go by the mailing list questions then Nagios is chock full of problems and
totally useless; if you read the documentation then you realize the list
is full of people who never read the documentation. 

> how responsive the community is,

In my experience, any newsgroup or mailing list that responds with
anything but "RTFM" to questions that would never have arisen had people
read the documentation is almost certain to become useless.  The real
experts get fed up with the clutter from the moronic questions and the
answers to those questions.  The nett expertise goes down considerably.
I have seen it in lists I've looked at hoping for sensible answers and
seen nothing but "how do I do X" when "X" is covered on the first page
of the installation documentation and responses that were obviously
incorrect and nobody putting them right.  But it would appear that some
people would prefer a list where there are lots of "I don't really know,
but maybe if you try this" responses because that list would be
"responsive."  I prefer one right answer to my question (even if it's
"RTFM" or "you're an idiot, RTFM") to dozens of wrong answers, but that's
just the way I am. 

Never do COMPETENT people turn to a mailing list for free support on
using the software.  Incompetent or lazy people do that.  Competent people
can either figure it out themselves or know that it would take them too
long and it's more economic to pay an expert to sort it out for them. 

> Having someone sounding off like that uncensored could

Key word: "could."  As in might, perhaps, maybe. 

> be hurting the adoption of this product in some

Key word: "some."  Anywhere from 0% to 100% depending on arbitrary
(and unspecified by you) assumptions. 

> companies by making the support base look bad.

Ah, your arbitrary assumptions become clear to me now you say "support
base." 

If there is a company that hasn't a clue about using linux or open source,
and if the employees of that company don't read the documentation, read
the FAQs, use google or do any of the things COMPETENT people do, and if
those employees are under the mistaken impression that the people on the
mailing list OWE them FREE support for moronic questions, and if they
look at the "support base" with the expectation that everyone on the list
exists to give them polite courteous answers to moronic questions (as a
paid-for support person would, and as I do to paying customers), and if
they are too stupid to understand that even if they dislike one (or
even all) of my posts that in no way invalidates the posts of others, and
if they don't know how to use a killfile, then yes, perhaps that company
might get a bad impression of the "support base." 

I can understand why you are so upset.  A (hypothetical) clueless company
with clueless employees expects the people on this list to do their work
for them for free and here I am making posts that discourage them.  Far
better that they swamp the list with their moronic questions and the
experts bugger off because then the list will have lots and lots of polite
(but incorrect) responses and everyone will be in happy bunny land where
the carrots are tasty and the clouds are fluffy and shit don't stink. 

-- 
Paul Allen
Softflare Support 



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