NRPE: Call to popen() failed

[ashok]

For a Unix server ,

Im getting this output for Swap and CPU Usages frequently.. and automatically it gets rectified,
NRPE: Call to popen() failed
Can someone please enlighten me what does the above ouptput mean

[tmcdonald]

• Is this the service status output you are seeing?
• What version of NRPE are you using?
• What OS and version are each of the servers?
• What Nagios version is this?

[ashok]

Is this the service status output you are seeing?
Yes.. Status Information

What version of NRPE are you using?
nrpe-2.12, nagios-plugins-1.4.15
What OS and version are each of the servers?
Hpunix V11.3i
What Nagios version is this?
Version 3.2.3

[abrist]

From the NRPE source:

Code: Select all

/* report an error if we couldn't run the command */
            if(fp==NULL){
                  strncpy(buffer,"NRPE: Call to popen() failed\n",sizeof(buffer)-1);

What are the permissions on the problematic plugins? Can you run them as the user "nagios"?

Code: Select all

ls -la <path/to/plugin>
su - nagios -c <check_command and args>

[tmcdonald]

This may be related to an older bug in NRPE:

http://tracker.nagios.org/view.php?id=330

Specifically, can you try the following post from the bug report as a potential fix?

Theoretically, this problem applies only when running under a non-root account (which is recommended).
As a workaround, you can increase the soft limit of "nofile" in /etc/security/limits.conf for the user account under which nrpe runs. You need to restart the process for the change to become effective.