Poor proxy support at install script

[vmesquita]

Hi,

I would like to report the poor support for proxy servers in the script. Apart from setting the proxy variable, I had to manually hack the script to add proxy to different commands. I think this should be a point of improvement for the future, since users with less knowledge might have some difficult doing the install.

[jolson]

I have submitted your suggestion as a feature request. Thanks for the feedback - I think that a proxy flag is a great idea.

[vmesquita]

Any update on on the request? I am updating to 1.4.1 and still the same issues with proxy are there.

[tmcdonald]

It seems the internal task was canceled and marked "duplicate" but the task it was marked as a duplicate of is not in fact the same. This must have been closed in error, I'm speaking to the developers now to get clarification and will update this thread accordingly.

[tmcdonald]

Unfortunately the developers have decided not to add this in at this time.

[scottwilkerson]

If your server requires proxies to access the Internet, it would be recommended to setup the server with the correct settings.

We have a document that outlines what should be changed in many cases here:
https://support.nagios.com/kb/article.php?id=147

While this document is for Nagios XI, the steps would be the same for Nagios Log Server also.

We do not recommend changing anything in the install or upgrade scripts.

[eloyd]

I may be misreading things here, and for that, I apologize, but is it the official stance of Nagios Enterprises that their products are not supported for installation behind a proxy? If so, I have to respectfully disagree with that strategic decision. More and more sites are going to be behind proxies, cut off from repos, and on isolated networks. Relying on a pure internet connection to be able to install things is likely to result in customers being unable to use Nagios and thus unwilling to spend money to purchase it. In fact, we had that very case with what would have been a very large corporate customer of ours. They decided to go with [Radio Edit] instead of Nagios because the machine that it needed to be installed on was forbidden from connecting to any public internet.

I get that there are limited resources and all that, but I think it would be worthwhile to add full proxy support. It's a lot easier than a completely offline install, for instance.


Now, if I'm misreading something, I apologize.

[jomann]

I am not actually sure why that document says it's unsupported. Besides us adding the ability to pass in proxy credentials to the install script - making sure the entire OS is able to run through the proxy will allow the install to happen. I'll go as far as saying it most likely says it's unsupported because we don't support the actual proxy and if you have an issue downloading X package then you need to figure out why you can't access it via your proxy. The article Scott linked should take care of that though, as long as things like assets.nagios.com, api.nagios.com, and the repos (including epel) for your Cent/RHEL install are available.

@eloyd - If you require an offline install; we have those available. The offline tarball requires absolutely no network connection to the outside. If you would rather clone repos we have nagios repos available also that can be cloned and used to install in more secured environments also. Both are available at repo.nagios.com.

The article Scott linked should work for any of the installs, however, there is not support internally in NLS/NNA for configuring the proxy once the actual product is installed... meaning things like update checks (essentially anything running through curl) does not have access to the internet ... which may or may not be necessary for you or even work for you with the proxy enabled although there is a feature request to add that support for all products. It already exists inside XI.

[eloyd]

@j, the offline install was in its infancy at the time of this customer's requirements last year. I've gone back to them since, but they have moved on. Thanks for the additional information.

[scottwilkerson]

I'll go as far as saying it most likely says it's unsupported because we don't support the actual proxy and if you have an issue downloading X package then you need to figure out why you can't access it via your proxy.

This is on the mark. Similarly, we also state that all of our software needs to be installed on a clean minimal install system. Because this is what has been tested.

MANY clients have to use their customized corporate builds as a base, which is fine, however we cannot provide support for potential package conflicts, etc.