NCPA For platforms other than Windows and Linux

[mp4783]

Are there any plans to provide the NCPA agent to other platforms? It doesn't appear that the source code is available, so there's no way to do it myself.

We would love to have a single agent architecture that really is "cross-platform" versus "bi-platform".

Thanks.

[abrist]

It is mostly python, so it should conceivably work on those systems which support python. What other platforms did you have in mind?

[mp4783]

Solaris 10, in particular.

The RPM distribution contains a lot of shared objects. I'm not very familiar with Python, but I assumed that it would mostly be Python scripts.

Were the shared objects created to protect proprietary code?

[lmiltchev]

This is something that the NCPA developer can answer. You can post your question here:

https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/ncpa/issues

FYI, you can see what packages are needed to build NCPA here:

https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/ncpabuild

[mp4783]

Is NCPA and "officially supported" Nagios product? What level of support may we expect for it?

As an agent purported to "rule them all", it currently rules Windows and Linux, leaving at least 3 other major Unix variants (AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris) on the outside.

[lmiltchev]

Is NCPA and "officially supported" Nagios product? What level of support may we expect for it?

Yes, it is. You can expect the same "level of support" for NCPA as for any other product of ours.

As an agent purported to "rule them all", it currently rules Windows and Linux, leaving at least 3 other major Unix variants (AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris) on the outside.

Currently, we have installers for Windows, Linux (RPM and DEB packaging based), and OS X and this is what we support. Please, see the NCPA documentation here:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/ncpa/docs/html/

NPCA is a fairly new agent and we are constantly improving it. The installers for AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris may be added in the future releases.

[mp4783]

That's not as helpful as the previous responses.

As it stands, using the Solaris CC compiler (see the "developer's" (I thought they worked for Nagios) Git site for more details), I have a Solaris 10 NCPA agent built and most of the supporting programs that you would see in Linux distribution.

However, it won't start properly due to its inability to find a network interface. If you're sufficiently intrigued to work with me on this (I've spent over 30 hours getting this far), then let me know.

Error message:

/var/tmp/ncpa_git_build/ncpa/agent/build/NCPA/ncpa_posix_listener --start
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cx_Freeze-4.3.4-py2.7-solaris-2.10-sun4v.32bit.egg/cx_Freeze/initscripts/Console.py", line 27, in <module>
exec(code, m.__dict__)
File "ncpa_posix_listener.py", line 6, in <module>
File "/var/tmp/ncpa_git_build/ncpa/agent/listener/server.py", line 8, in <module>
import psapi
File "/var/tmp/ncpa_git_build/ncpa/agent/listener/psapi.py", line 170, in <module>
root = get_root_node()
File "/var/tmp/ncpa_git_build/ncpa/agent/listener/psapi.py", line 144, in get_root_node
interface = get_interface_node()
File "/var/tmp/ncpa_git_build/ncpa/agent/listener/psapi.py", line 125, in get_interface_node
if_children = [make_if_nodes(x) for x in list(ps.net_io_counters(pernic=True).keys())]
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/psutil-2.2.1-py2.7-solaris-2.10-sun4v.32bit.egg/psutil/__init__.py", line 1786, in net_io_counters
raise RuntimeError("couldn't find any network interface")
RuntimeError: couldn't find any network interface

[scottwilkerson]

We do not at this time have support for NCPA on Solaris.

NCPA is an open project, and while it may be possible to make it work, we have not tested any process for creating a build on any Solaris platform at this time.

Current platforms that are known to work are listed here
http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/ncpa/download.php

[mp4783]

It's great that it's an open project, but I'm asking if there's anyone who can help. We have thousands of Solaris servers and there are millions around the world. I've already spent 50+ hours trying to make this work and would be glad to share it with anyone who can help.

You claim this is "one agent to rule them all", but that's clearly not even remotely close.

Is this a case of you guys wanting to be paid by us to do the development of something that you're going to share with everyone? I don't think my supplier management folks would agree to that.

You're responses up to this point have been extremely disappointing.

[tmcdonald]

Let's take a step back for a moment and make some things clear. Yes, the project does say "one agent to rule them all" but directly underneath that we say the following:

We currently build for Windows, Mac OS X, RHEL/CentOS 5/6/7, Fedora 21, Debian/Ubuntu, SLES 11/12, and OpenSUSE 11/12/13. If your operating system of choice is not on the list and none of the builds work for you, then you can request it to be added here at GitHub.

And directly under that we say:

While we recommend using our pre-built solutions above, if you'd like to build NCPA yourself there are a few things you may run into that can cause problems with your build.

So it should be fairly clear that 100% compatibility is not currently achieved. Cross-Platform vs All-Platform is an important distinction.

The "one agent to rule them all" bit is a slogan, not a guarantee of functionality. So no, we do not have support for Solaris at this time, but down the line it may be fully supported. As mentioned before it is a work in progress, so the best bet at this point is to work with the developers over Github since that is where issues are currently tracked. I will also speak to them about removing the slogan from the project, but I have a feeling it likely will stay.