notification_period not honoured on host config?

[mikej]

I'm having troubles getting Nagios to honor a notification_period setting for a predefined timeperiod.

My timeperiod definition is called 'sleep' as in, do not notify me between midnight and 7am. it looks like this:

Code: Select all

 define timeperiod{
    timeperiod_name sleep
    alias           Not Middle of Night
    sunday          07:00-23:59
    monday          07:00-23:59
    tuesday         07:00-23:59
    wednesday       07:00-23:59
    thursday        07:00-23:59
    friday          07:00-23:59
    saturday        07:00-23:59
    }

I've entered the directive for the hosts as follows:

Code: Select all

define host{
    use             linux-server,host-pnp
    host_name       server.domain.com
    alias           server.domain.com
    address         xxx.33.xxx.243
    notification_period     sleep
    }

This morning I was expecting to see WARNING notifications but only after 7am. Instead, I saw them throughout the night between 23:59 last night and 7am this morning.

My understanding from the configuration is that I should NOT have received any emails during this time.

Have I overlooked something? I was hoping it would be this simple but it didn't work as expected.

[abrist]

Is the clock right on the nagios server?
Do you have time periods setup on the service checks?

[mikej]

Thanks for the quick response.

Yes, the time is correct. I double-checked it against an NTP server and it matches other servers to.

Regarding the service checks, do I need to specify the notification_period directive for each service check within the host.cfg file? I might be mistaken but I thought I could simply apply the directive once in the host.cfg file. For example, what if a host has up to 20 service checks?

Thanks again!
Mike

[abrist]

Do the service checks have the same notification time period as the host check?

[mikej]

Thanks again for your help.

Below are two service checks for the host in question (there are no notification time periods defined for each of them specifically).

Code: Select all

define service{
        use                             generic-service,srv-pnp
        host_name                       server.domain.com
        service_description             PING
        check_command                   check_ping!100.0,20%!500.0,60%
        }

define service{
        use                             generic-service,srv-pnp
        host_name                       server.domain.com
        service_description             Load
        check_command                   check_nrpe!check_load -a 15,10,5 30,25,20
        }

[mikej]

After rereading the documentation, the linux-server template in templates.cfg has a value that is inherited from the generic-host template:

Code: Select all

define host{
        name                            generic-host    ; The name of this host template
        notifications_enabled           1               ; Host notifications are enabled
        event_handler_enabled           1               ; Host event handler is enabled
        flap_detection_enabled          1               ; Flap detection is enabled
        failure_prediction_enabled      1               ; Failure prediction is enabled
        process_perf_data               1               ; Process performance data
        retain_status_information       1               ; Retain status information across program restarts
        retain_nonstatus_information    1               ; Retain non-status information across program restarts
        notification_period             24x7            ; Send host notifications at any time
        register                        0               ; DONT REGISTER THIS DEFINITION - ITS NOT A REAL HOST, JUST A TEMPLATE!
        }

The line from the linux-server template is this:

Code: Select all

notification_period             workhours       ; Linux admins hate to be woken up, so we only notify during the day
                                                        ; Note that the notification_period variable is being overridden from
                                                        ; the value that is inherited from the generic-host template!

So, it looks like the object inheritance to the generic-host template is overriding the the custom value for my host server.domain.com. As in, it's not honouring my custom config for that particular host, but still retrieving the notify 24x7 value from the template.

Any ideas?

[abrist]

You could create a different host template without the notification time periods. Does your generic-service template have any notification time periods set?

[mikej]

Yes, it's set in the generic-service template.

But... I would have thought that if we have a notification_period directive on the child (in this case the host config) it would override the service checks on each?

I guess what I'm asking is if the child (server.domain.com.cfg) has a custom directive, shouldn't that override the notifications for service checks on that host? It seems odd that I would need to create custom templates for one-off situations where I only want a couple of hosts to have custom directives (in this case notifications).

Perhaps this is the way the inheritance works. Is that the case?

[mikej]

Sorry, a clearer question is:

Does the child override the parent? Or the parent override the child?

IE:

server.domain.com.cfg custom directive is overridden by whats in templates.cfg
or
templates.cfg custom directive is overridden by whats in server.domain.com.cfg

Thanks for your help.

[abrist]

From: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... tance.html

Normally you have to either explicitly specify the value of a required variable in an object definition or inherit it from a template. There are a few exceptions to this rule, where Nagios will assume that you want to use a value that instead comes from a related object. For example, the values of some service variables will be copied from the host the service is associated with if you don't otherwise specify them.

Essentially, the service checks will only inherit the host settings if they are not defined on the service.