Why are there "commands"?

[Marc Powell]

On Aug 28, 2009, at 12:18 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

> I don't really understand the purpose / utility of the "command"  
> level of
> abstraction in Nagios configuration.  (2.10; we're still on Centos  
> 4.7).
>
> To define a new service to check particular Windows web services we've
> written, I define a service, and then it has to refer to a command,  
> and
> over in the command I have to hard-code the parameters needed to  
> test this
> specific service -- so in fact I need a separate command for each  
> service.

Can you give an example? I think you just don't know the flexibility  
that is available. You shouldn't need to hard code much except those  
things that are constant. Nagios has extensive macro capabilities and  
allows you to pass much data from service definitions and other parts  
of nagios to the commands being run. This allows you to re-use generic  
command definitions between many different services that check similar  
things. Have you read the Macro documentation, particularly passing  
arguments to commands?

> As a broader question, are there documents that give more of a logical
> overview of Nagios, explaining how and why things are broken up and  
> how
> they work together?

The published Documentation? Beyond that, ask specifics but be sure  
you've read the documentation first.

--
Marc


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