A couple newb questions

[Forsaken]

Hi there,

I'm fairly new to dealing with nagios. I'm currently running nagios
2.10 on OpenBSD (using their package)

My first question is thus -

Are hostgroups pretty much just a cosmetic gathering for viewing in a
web interface, or can they serve some practical use during
configuration. 

For example, if I define a hostgroup of servers as web servers, is
there any way for me to then define a service check for http that can
reference the hostgroup instead of having to list individual member
servers?

For the record, I'm aware that setups are easily scripted and there are
a wealth of tools out there to make it easy. I'm still dealing with the
basics, and my lab environment is small enough that I can do the config
files by hand without wanting to poke large pointed objects through my
eyeballs. I'm mostly just trying to understand how everything relates
to each other.

Now, to stave off the inevitable question as to why I'm learning on the
2.x branch of Nagios instead of the most current - I'm using David
Josephsen's book as my primer, and since it covers the 2.x branch,
that's what I'm using. Once I'm comfortable enough with the software, I
would like to work with the current stuff. 

To get to the question - if someone could give me a nutshell version of
the major differences between 2.x and 3.x, I'd appreciate it.

Thank you all in advance for your time, and my apologies if I'm running
over old ground.



-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
It's the best place to buy or sell services for
just about anything Open Source.
http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null