Phantom contacts

[hhlodge]

If I have a service with no templates defined and succinctly only have one contact defined, no contact groups, how/why would members of a contact group be getting notifcations? I cannot find where else that contact group could be buried. I am using notify-service-by-email for notifications but that should not matter. Is there some "default" recipients list I may have overwritten the value of somewhere? Thanks.

[mguthrie]

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

Implied Inheritance

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.

The following table lists the object variables that will be implicitly inherited from related objects if you don't explicitly specify their value in your object definition or inherit them from a template.
Object Type Object Variable Implied Source
Services contact_groups contact_groups in the associated host definition
notification_interval notification_interval in the associated host definition
notification_period notification_period in the associated host definition
Host Escalations contact_groups contact_groups in the associated host definition
notification_interval notification_interval in the associated host definition
escalation_period notification_period in the associated host definition
Service Escalations contact_groups contact_groups in the associated service definition
notification_interval notification_interval in the associated service definition
escalation_period notification_period in the associated service definition

[hhlodge]

Well that explains it, thank you. I'm not sure I like the assumption. Again, the utility to display recipients for a given service check that I put in a feature request for would be helpful here. It would be great if it also displayed from where the recipient was determined, like so.

Code: Select all

Host              Service                  Recipients           Source

localhost        Check1                  xx                       Inherited from generic-service
                                                  yy                       Locally in service definitition
                     Check2                  zz                       Inherited from host definition
host2             Check1                  aa                       .......

[mguthrie]

I can't promise a particular timeline for that feature, but I do really like that feature idea, and even from a support side of things I think it would be helpful.

[hhlodge]

Another nice feature would be to be able to have negating values to override a template. For example, if someone was in a contact group in a template used wide-spread, you could put "-username" to the contacts value to have them not get notifications for a given service. Of course this would be a change to Nagios core.

[hhlodge]

This continues to elude me. I replaced all the members of the suspect contact group with just a single, newly created contact and I still get notifications sent to one contact who is no contact groups or templates; host or service. I've grep'd through the entire /usr/local/nag* tree and don't see where his name is anywhere except in his own contacts.cfg definition. His name is clearly on the $NOTIFICATIONRECIPIENTS$ list and email is sent out. I'm going bats trying to nail this down.

[hhlodge]

After finding the persistent user in objects.cache despite not being in any of the core host or services configs, I went to delete the contact group this user was a member of and it would not let me due to a dependent service, which was highlighted in red. So I found this contact group specifically defined, removed it and then the user stopped being part of the notification list. I added the contact group back with the same name but different contact in it but that member does not get notified. So something behind core (in XI?) was persistent that was not visible in the core config files which is unsettling. Next I went around and looked at the information icon output for that contact group for some services, one that was deleted and one which was not. In the Alerts tab conctact groups list, the suspect group was in both the one that could be deleted and the one that could not. I think a major problem is when you go into the GUI - again - you don't see what's the effect of a template or other contributing configuration. So there's no succinct way to see with any confidence what's really configured for alerts.

[mguthrie]

Which version of Nagios XI are you currently running?

[hhlodge]

2011R1.5 manual install on CentOS 5.5 64 bit physical server.

[mguthrie]

There are some differences between Core and XI with how notifications, users and contacts work. Here's a doc outlining the differences.
http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... ndcontacts

This could be the cause of the strangeness.