WMI's

[Mark Weaver]

I think you're being too kind. I woke up this morning full of myself and 
after having guzzled two cups of coffee by the time I started on that 
post.... well, I bit of the ass-hat came out. My apologies.

Most of my frustration at the moment is coming from not knowing what 
questions to ask Google or what some of the directives mean or even what 
they are. I get the basic concept I just don't speak the language yet. 
It's coming though. The Nagios book I got today is already starting to 
clear up some of the fogginess.

Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> Mark, thanks for keeping the tone very much to the point and
> trying hard yourself. Very few people do this, so the "bones" we throw
> on this list are generally on the assumption that people haven't.
>
> Mark Weaver wrote:
>>
>> Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>>> Martyn wrote:
>>>  
>>>> How do I add the windows credentials.
>>>>
>>>> check_nt -H 192.168.1.1 -p 1248 -v INSTANCES -l Process
>>>>
>>>> If I run the above it will give me a refused connection, where in 
>>>> the above
>>>> line would I add the username and password of the Windows box I 
>>>> want to
>>>> connect to?
>>>>
>>>>     
>>> You're holding a hammer and want someone to explain to you how to 
>>> use it
>>> as a car. It can't be done with check_nt, but there are other 
>>> programs out
>>> there that can ask questions over WMI, and you already know of some of
>>> them. Google should hold plenty of other resources if installing 
>>> nsclient,
>>> NCNet or nsclient++ is not an option for you, although some programming
>>> may be necessary on your part.
>>>
>
> A clarification will be necessary here, I feel. You mentioned a few apps
> in your original post which utilizes WMI to access windows boxes, so I
> obviously figured you had researched them already.
>
> The hammer != car analogy is two-fold actually. One meaning is that you
> were using the wrong tool. The other is that you might be thinking along
> wrong lines entirely. I'm willing to bet that 99% of all nagios 
> installations
> in the world monitor Windows servers either using SNMP or one of the 3 
> easily
> available clients designed specifically for that purpose (nsclient, 
> nsclient++
> and NC_Net). check_nt *can* talk to either of those clients, but they 
> do not
> use WMI while doing so.
>
> The exception is NC_Net which can, if I understand how it works 
> correctly (I
> may not; I haven't looked at its source/README's at all, since our own 
> way
> of doing it is sufficient), query other windows servers using the dotnet
> framework. However, the chain then becomes
>
> nagios -> check_nt -> NC_Net on one windows server -> Other windows 
> server
>
> In other words, you need to use NC_Net on one server as a sort of proxy,
> and that seems to fall slightly outside what you wanted.
>
> However, the excellent Mono framework runs just fine under Linux, and
> since NC_Net is written in C# (I checked since I last posted about it),
> a moderately skilled programmer shouldn't have too much difficulty
> adapting NC_Net to cut out the proxy server and send queries directly
> to the targeted Windows server from which one actually wants information.
>
> Had you responded "Right, I'm not a programmer so if you could hint at
> what's required for this?", I'd have known you're not. The post above
> was a kind of bait for both you and Tony Montibello (NC_Net author), as
> I believe a mono-based plugin to check windows systems would be totally
> awesome. I have no need for it though, so I won't be working on it.
>
>
>>>   
>> *warning: post contains rant*
>>
>> Andreas, you're making my head hurt! ;) I've been using (learning) 
>> Nagios now for about a week now and haven't encountered anything with 
>> such a vertical learning curve like this since I started learning 
>> Linux in 1996. Climbing this learning curve causes massive 
>> frustration, but once success happens there's a huge release of 
>> satisfaction and self-accomplishment. I personally am enjoying the 
>> trip and experience.
>>
>> Yesterday, after feeling comfortable getting Nagios to talk to 
>> servers on my local network for checking the obvious services running 
>> on them - linux and windows servers - like IIS, Apache, SMTP and the 
>> like I started working on getting my workstation to talk to the 
>> Nagios server via the NSClient++ package. This is going to be yet 
>> another challenge and one I fully accept.
>>
>> Let me tell you, for me the harder something is the more tenacious I 
>> become and refuse to let go until I master it. That being said the 
>> documentation which comes with Nagios seriously sucks until you begin 
>> to get on to the Nagios way of doing things. Over the last week I 
>> have googled more than I have in the last 5 years getting my test-bed 
>> nagios system going. I have literally googled my brains out. At the 
>> moment I'm somewhat at a loss to know whether I've worked harder 
>> googling for information or actually getting to know the Nagios way 
>> and making things work! I'm leaning towards Googling...
>>
>> So for you to curtly suggest that all can easily be found googling as 
>> an answer to this question is, well... just too easy. Either you 
>> don't actually know or you don't feel like telling. I totally 
>> understand though because I suspect you yourself have worked very 
>> hard getting to know and work with Nagios and have put quite a bit of 
>> time into the gaining the experience you now possess, but throwing us 
>> noobs a bone isn't really asking too much is it?
>>
>> Bone == link to information
>> slap in one's face == go google it...
>>
>
> Well, now that it seems you are no longer bothering to use WMI 
> credentials
> (which was what the original post was all about), you really should be
> able to find all the information you need using google. I have a fairly
> good idea what queries I'd use. 'nagios "check windows" download' without
> single quotes would be a good start. Adapt it from there and you can't
> possibly fail. You'll notice that check_nt *is* the tool to use for that,
> but then we are, again, drifting away from the original post regarding
> WMI.
>
>
>> Yeah... we can find the stuff we need by googling for it, but 
>> wouldn't it be nice if the documentation were a lot more robust and 
>> contained in a wiki somewhere? I have yet to find one for Nagios. In 
>> fact most of the sites I've found for Nagios waste my time. Which is 
>> pretty much what suggesting someone google for something does. 
>> They're hoping for, at the very least a kick in the ass in the right 
>> direction but get sent back to the place of frustration - Google! The 
>> trick to googling is knowing the right question to ask and after 
>> you've been spending hours trying to suss out something that is 
>> vexing one's soul that becomes an exercise in futility. (I'm ranting, 
>> but I don't mean it in an accusatory tone.)
>>
>> As I said, I do understand that you and others have invested a great 
>> deal of time and effort into learning Nagios and how to work it, but 
>> if you don't want to share whats locked away in your brains then why 
>> even respond to the post?
>>
>
> Because very little is locked away in my brain that didn't come from the
> internet in one way or another in the first place, and I won't tell you
> to whom I lost my virginity anyway ;-)
>
> Personally, I think your confusion and lack of success with Google stems
> from a couple of things;
> * You started the thread asking about WMI credentials.
> * Tomasz Chmielewski replied (not entirely erroneously) that you can make
>  checks using whichever credentials you want. He did however fail to
>  mention that quite a lot of those checks would require substantial
>  programming skills and effort to realize (there are no opensource
>  programs designed specifically to set the clocks of GPS-satellites,
>  for example, but it *could* be done by a sufficiently skilled and
>  dedicated programmer).
> * You proceeded to ask questions about a specific plugin (check_nt),
>  asking it to do something it can't do (and was never intended to do),
>  while at the same time displaying a rather severe lack of research
>  into how check_nt works.
> * I replied, rather shortly, that check_nt can't do what you want. This
>  would have been obvious if you had read its documentation, so I didn't
>  bother researching the further pointers I gave you, since I doubted
>  you were worth spending any time on anyway. I'm now happily proven
>  wrong. In a way, this small essay is a token of that.
>
>> If I've offended I do apologize, but as an experience network admin 
>> and a Nagios noob I know the value of my time and yours and others 
>> searching for the information that would hopfully unlock the doors 
>> currently barring them from reaching the next milestone or goal. I 
>> appreciated your metaphore of a hammer and a car; the fact that it 
>> can't be done with check_nt was informative, but then you lost me 
>> when you said just google it.
>>
>
> You have not offended (well, you did a little, but the fences are mended
> so no harm done ;-)).
>
>> Google What for pete's sake? (after a long day of wrestling with the 
>> beast that could mean google for anything ranging from the best 
>> recipe for blueberry pancakes to the ingredient to a fusion device!)
>>
>
> That depends on the question, which I'm still not sure you understand.
>
> Q1: What's the most common and tested way of monitoring windows servers?
> A1: We (op5 AB) use NSClient++ on all of our 300+ customers' windows
>    servers. It works great. Another server-side agent to do the same
>    is NC_Net, which does things a bit differently. Both work just fine,
>    so just grab whichever you like best and go with that.
>
> Q2: How do I check my windows-servers without installing a server-side
>    agent? The program doing the checking must authenticate using WMI
>    credentials.
> A2: I don't think anything like that exists now. If it does, google
>    can almost certainly provide a link for it. If you're a moderately
>    skilled programmer, you should be able to modify NC_Net to run
>    through Mono on your Nagios server and thus achieve your agent-less
>    windows monitoring.
>
>
> The confusion arises because you seem to wobble between these two 
> questions,
> and in the post I replied to, you sort of asked both at once but mingled
> them so that no answer in the world would have made sense.
>
> If your *actual* question isn't one of the two above, you should probably
> spend a couple of minutes trying to figure out exactly what your end-goal
> is ("I want to monitor disk and cpu-usage on my windows-servers") and
> *then* figure out restrictions or problems around that end-goal ("I'm not
> allowed to install any agent on the servers, or enable SNMP"). When 
> you've
> figured it out, come back here and put together a coherent request of
> pointers to achieve your end-goal. Trying one solution and asking about
> specific problems you run into along the way when it later shows that 
> your
> entire solution is totally wrong from the start is a sure-fire way of
> getting you possibly humorous but utterly unhelpful responses.
>
>> Frankly, if I knew more about Nagios and the intimacies thereof, I 
>> would gladly host a wiki for it on one my web servers, but alas I'm a 
>> noob. my one burning question: Why the hell isn't there a wiki for 
>> Nagios, and if there is where the bloody hell is it?
>>
>
> That's a new question. I don't know the answer to it, but a qualified 
> guess
> would be "there is, you just haven't found it" or "because noone has 
> bothered
> to set one up".
>
>> Thank you for you kind attention and for putting up with this 
>> petulant Nagios Newbie.
>>
>
> Thanks for not turning into a petulant whiny wanker in the face of 
> apparent
> rudeness. Far too many people do that. Needless to say, they accomplish
> very little, whereas you who approached it from a far more mature 
> response
> has already attracted the attention of, if I may be so bold, two of this
> lists most knowledgeable persons; Marc and my not-so-humble self ;-)
>

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