Configuration changes not taking effect after restart of Nagios

Deborah Martin Deborah.Martin at kognitio.com
Fri Apr 26 14:27:50 CEST 2013


Thanks to everyone that replied.

The problem is when I  grep I will find correct occurrences of when the sms group should be used. And I want to just remove it from one serviceescalation definition for  a particular service check.  I certainly don't want to get rid of that group altogether.

The problem seems to be that although I've removed that group from the contacts_group of the serviceescalation definition and when I reload nagios (I've also killed nagios, deleted cache files .dat files etc etc) I can see "configuration" for service escalations, both the old entry including the sms group and the newly amended entry without the sms group.

My installation is always under /usr/local/nagios and the configuration files sit under etc/production/customer_name/hosts.cfg or services.cfg and the main config files are always under
/usr/local/nagios/etc/_systemfiles so that customer specific configs are very separate to anything that is system / global wide to nagios. I compile nagios from source rather than rpms so I can control exactly where things go etc etc. There are no config files in /usr/local/nagios/etc, just production and _systemfiles directorys

This is how it's been configured since I started using nagios back in late early 2000's. The only difference is that I recently upgraded SLES 11 SP2 and Nagios 3.4.4 as we had a problem with time drifts as the environment is a VM (And yes - I know that generally VM's are a bad idea for monitoring but I have to work with what I'm given :( )  .
I've never come across objects.precache so haven't knowingly configured nagios to use that. I can't find that file anywhere on the system.

I've just killed nagios again, removed status.dat, retention.dat and objects.cache. I've switched off the option in nagios.cfg to not look at  objects.cache.
I've restarted nagios but it still shows both the old and new config for the serviceescalation. I'm completely stumped. I don't know where else to look.
A new objects.cache has been created - is that right even though I've commented that out in nagios.cfg ?

# OBJECT CACHE FILE
# This option determines where object definitions are cached when
# Nagios starts/restarts.  The CGIs read object definitions from
# this cache file (rather than looking at the object config files
# directly) in order to prevent inconsistencies that can occur
# when the config files are modified after Nagios starts.
#object_cache_file=/usr/local/nagios/var/objects.cache
Thanks,
Deborah


Deborah Martin
Kognitio Analytical Platform Support
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From: Grant Maxwell [mailto:grant.maxwell at maxan.com.au]
Sent: 25 April 2013 22:44
To: Nagios Users List
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Configuration changes not taking effect after restart of Nagios

Hi Deborah

Essentially it comes down to this. Somewhere you have a file with the offending definition in it. You need to find that file and either delete it or move it somewhere where it won't influence the startup.

The first thing I would check is the nagios.cfg file, in particular the lines like:
cfg_file=
cfg_dir=

Then check all of the files/directories mentioned in case there is a left-over line in one of them. You could use grep for that.

If you don't find the offending file/entry then that is most strange because those config lines determine what files and folders nagios will look in for its configurations.

Moving on and assuming that did not find it then I would search the whole system (bigger hammer).

If you are using windows then you can use the windows search facility to find it. If you are using linux (or any UNIX variant) you can use the following command to search the entire system to find it. It searches the whole system because nagios does have files in a few locations. It should only read configs from the locations in the nagios.cfg file but because you can't find the offending file -then use a slightly bigger hammer.

find / -type f -name \*.cfg -exec grep -L "smsgroupname"  {}  \;

replace smsgroupname with the name of the sms group you got rid of.
The command will list any files that contain the sms group name. It may print some filenames that it could not access. Thats ok just ignore them.
once you find the file .... you know what to do.

let us know how you go ....

regards
Grant


On 26/04/2013, at 2:40 AM, Deborah Martin <Deborah.Martin at kognitio.com<mailto:Deborah.Martin at kognitio.com>> wrote:


Thanks, I've just tried that and it hasn't made any difference. Somehow the sms group still creeps in. I've grepped all the config files to ensure everything is as it should be. Somehow, something is causing the configuration to pick up the old config. I've stopped nagios, deleted the suggested files, restarted nagios.

I've even taken the service escalation out of the config - now that works - I can see it's missing when I look at the configuration for service escalations for that particular node.
When I add the escalation back in, it just doesn't pick it up correctly.

Here are the definitions of sorts with customer related stuff removed :-
define host{
        use                     generic-host
        host_name               hostname-a
        alias                   hostname-a     ; Lowercase
        address                 172.18.5.41
        hostgroups              APP ; Uppercase
        contact_groups          app-group,oracle-group,it-helpdesk-group
        check_command           check_ping!100.0,20%!500.0,60%
        check_interval          1 ;
        check_period            24x7
        notification_interval   5
        notification_period     24x7
        check_period            24x7
        }

define hostescalation{
        host_name               hostname-a
        first_notification      2
        last_notification       2
        notification_interval   2
        escalation_options      d       ; Only escalate when in DOWN state
        escalation_period       oncall
        contact_groups          apps-sms-oncall-group, app-group, oracle-group,it-helpdesk-group
        }

define hostescalation{
        host_name               hostname-a
        first_notification      3
        last_notification       3
        notification_interval   2
        escalation_options      d       ; Only escalate when in DOWN state
        escalation_period       oncall
        contact_groups          app-group,oracle-group,it-helpdesk-group
        }

define service{
        use                     generic-service
        active_checks_enabled   1       ; Active service check enabled
        host_name               hostname-a
        normal_check_interval   5
        service_description     Oracle Data check for hostname-a  ; AP ports for external app only
        servicegroups           apps
        check_command           check_nrpe_oracle_data
        contact_groups          app-group,oracle-group
        max_check_attempts      1;
        notification_interval   10;
        check_interval          5;
        retry_check_interval    1;
        notification_period     MonSun
        notification_options    u,c,r   ; CHG2 Added warnings for this check only
        }

## Escalation ONE:
define serviceescalation {
        host_name               hostname-a;
        service_description     Oracle Data check for hostname-a  ;
        first_notification      2
        last_notification       0
        notification_interval   30
        escalation_options      u,c,r             ;
        escalation_period       oracle-oncall ; Only escalate during oncall periods
        contact_groups          app-group,oracle-group
        }

define servicegroup{
        servicegroup_name       apps
        alias                   3rd Party Application monitoring
        }

define contactgroup{
        contactgroup_name       app-group
        alias                   Application Administrators
        members                 app-admin
        }


define contact{
        contact_name                    app-admin
        alias                           app-admin
        contactgroups                   app-group
        service_notification_period     24x7
        host_notification_period        24x7
        service_notification_options    w,u,c,r
        host_notification_options       d,u,r
        service_notification_commands   notify-by-email
        host_notification_commands      host-notify-by-email
        email                           support at kognitio.com<mailto:support at kognitio.com>
        }


define contactgroup{
        contactgroup_name      oracle-group
        alias                  Oracle Administrators
        members                person-a, person-b
        }

define contact{
        contact_name                    person-a
        alias                           perona-a
        service_notification_period     24x7
        host_notification_period        24x7
        service_notification_options    w,u,c,r
        host_notification_options       d,u,r
        service_notification_commands   notify-by-email
        host_notification_commands      host-notify-by-email
        email                           person-a at kognitio.com<mailto:person-a at kognitio.com>
        }

define contact{
        contact_name                    person-b
       alias                           person-b
        service_notification_period     24x7
        host_notification_period        24x7
        service_notification_options    w,u,c,r
        host_notification_options       d,u,r
        service_notification_commands   notify-by-email
        host_notification_commands      host-notify-by-email
        email                           person-b at kognitio.com<mailto:person-b at kognitio.com>
        }

define timeperiod{
        timeperiod_name oracle-oncall
        alias           Oracle Oncall Hours
        sunday          00:00-24:00
        monday          08:00-09:00,17:30-20:00
        tuesday         08:00-09:00,17:30-20:00
        wednesday       08:00-09:00,17:30-20:00
        thursday        08:00-09:00,17:30-20:00
        friday          08:00-09:00,17:30-20:00
        saturday        08:00-20:00
        }

Maybe I've done something with the above config that is causing this but for the life of me I can't see it!

Regards,
Deborah

Deborah Martin
Kognitio Analytical Platform Support
______________________________________________________________________
Direct +44 1344 788670  Switch +44 1344 300770 | Deborah.martin at kognitio.com<mailto:Deborah.martin at kognitio.com>
______________________________________________________________________
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From: davor grgicevic [mailto:dgrgicevic at gmail.com<http://gmail.com>]
Sent: 24 April 2013 17:03
To: Nagios Users List
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Configuration changes not taking effect after restart of Nagios

Hi  Deobrah
try  following:
stop  nagios
erase objects.cache, status.dat and  retention.dat
start  nagios
Best,


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 1:38 PM, Deborah Martin <Deborah.Martin at kognitio.com<mailto:Deborah.Martin at kognitio.com>> wrote:
Hi,

I'm using Nagios 3.4.4 on SLES 11 SP2. This has been running for around two months.

Recently I needed to change the configuration for a service escalation to remove a contact group that would get sms alerts. I restarted Nagios and everything ran fine.

However, it's been reported that recently, the team that shouldn't be getting the sms alerts are still getting them. When I look at the Configuration for service escalations, I can now see two entries for the same escalation, one which is the new , with the sms contact group removed and one with the old config which has the sms contact group included. But when I look at the actual .cfg file for the service escalation definition, there is not mention of the sms group anymore. I've checked, and re-checked and still I can't see why this has happened.

I've even stopped Nagios for a short while and restarted it from scratch and this still doesn't make any difference.

Has anyone else see any oddities like this where config changes don't seem to take effect after a restart of Nagios ?

Is there a "cache" file I can remove from the configuration forcing nagios to recreate it from scratch so that reads the rest of the .cfg files properly ?

Any pointers / ideas on where I go from here would be really appreciated.

Regards,
Deborah


Deborah Martin
Kognitio Analytical Platform Support
______________________________________________________________________
Direct +44 1344 788670<tel:%2B44%201344%20788670>  Switch +44 1344 300770<tel:%2B44%201344%20300770> | Deborah.martin at kognitio.com<mailto:Deborah.martin at kognitio.com>
______________________________________________________________________
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www.kognitio.com<http://www.kognitio.com/>
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