UNKNOWN service state question

[Marc Powell]

On Feb 17, 2009, at 8:47 AM, Nicole Hähnel wrote:

> Hmm...
> And why is UNKNOWN a hard state and not soft?

Because it reached max_check_attempts. Nagios treats all non-OK states  
the same. If the plugin returns any non-OK state, the service is put  
into a soft state until max_check_attempts is reached, at which point  
the service becomes hard and the notification logic is processed. You  
can see this in nagios.log.

> I would say, unknown is like critical and I need OK to know if
> everything works allright in a network.

This seems contradictory. It's all right with you if things are down  
for an hour if you don't know it but not ok if it has been fixed and  
still shows down in nagios until the next normal check?

> So why should nagios wait for the next normal scheduled check if it is
> unknown if a service is OK?

Because that's what nagios does. Once max_check_attempts is reached  
for *any* non-OK state, nagios reverts back to normal_check_interval.  
That works well for most people and allows for a working monitoring  
system during major outages. If that doesn't work for you, you could  
use an event handler to lower normal_check_interval upon reaching a  
hard non-OK state and raise it back to normal upon reaching a hard OK  
state.

http://www.nagios.org/developerinfo/externalcommands/commandlist.php

CHANGE_NORMAL_HOST_CHECK_INTERVAL
CHANGE_NORMAL_SVC_CHECK_INTERVAL

--
Marc


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