Cutting down on notifications

[t3dus]

So I'm looking to cut down on the number of notifications I get for a single issue.

My issue is if my webserver goes down (Which I monitor) I also get complains about the websites I monitor on the same said server.

I thought i had it setup so if the "parent" host goes down the children don't notify me for the same outage but that isn't the case.

Example: If Host A goes down and site example.com lists Host A as a parent I still get notified about example.com being down.

[steffi]

I thought i had it setup so if the "parent" host goes down the children don't notify me for the same outage but that isn't the case.

The option is named "parents", not parent.
Did you verify your nagios.cfg/restart server after changes? Or is "parent" just a typo?

[benjaminsmith]

As @steffi mentioned, verify your configuration and then restart nagios. If your still having the issue, post the configurtion definitions for us to review.

To verify your configuration:

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/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

To restart nagios:

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service nagios restart

[t3dus]

You are right. I meant to say "parents" and yes it's specified but still get notifications from both the parents and the child when the server is down.

Do I need to specify some sort of delay so i don't get notifications from the child when the parents is down?

[benjaminsmith]

Hi @t3dus,

You're probably are receiving notifications because those child hosts are configured to notify when they are in an unreachable state. Check the notification options in your configuration files.

See this page for more information:
Determining Status and Reachability of Network Hosts

If you want to spare yourself from a flood of UNREACHABLE notifications during network outages, you can exclude the unreachable (u) option from the notification_options directive in your host definitions and/or the host_notification_options directive in your contact definitions.

[t3dus]

Hi @t3dus,

You're probably are receiving notifications because those child hosts are configured to notify when they are in an unreachable state. Check the notification options in your configuration files.

See this page for more information:
Determining Status and Reachability of Network Hosts

If you want to spare yourself from a flood of UNREACHABLE notifications during network outages, you can exclude the unreachable (u) option from the notification_options directive in your host definitions and/or the host_notification_options directive in your contact definitions.

I guess that's one way to do it.

I was picturing it would work like this link https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ncies.html by default but apparently it doesn't.

What I want is if the parent host is down (aka a router) that all the other hosts/services after that don't notify me and spam my e-mail.

[benjaminsmith]

Hi @t3dus,

I was picturing it would work like this link https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ncies.html by default but apparently it doesn't.

Can you post your configuration definitions for us to review.

There's also a configuration setting in /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg that will allow you to disable service checks when the host is down on system wide basis.

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host_down_disable_service_checks=1

[telix]

I used to use this technique of making socket timeouts return an UNKNOWN state instead of CRITICAL .
Then to disable service alarms on UNKNOWN
https://chriscarey.com/blog/2012/06/09/ ... ds-alerts/

Wish I knew about this host_down_disable_service_checks=1 setting! Looks like a much better approach and exactly what was needed

[lmiltchev]

You are right. I meant to say "parents" and yes it's specified but still get notifications from both the parents and the child when the server is down.

@t3dus, what kind of notifications are you receiving? Can you show us an actual email notification that you received? Have you excluded the unreachable (u) option from the notification_options directive in your host definitions and/or the host_notification_options directive in your contact definitions? Can you show us sample configs?