Need help installing 3rd party community plugins

[Jacktivated]

Greetings,

I have spent an exhaustive amount of time trying to research how to install additional 3rd party plugins. For instance, ones that are posted at exchange.nagios.org by the community, but to no avail. Most documentation is for installing plugins in Nagios XI, and the only Nagios Core documentation I can find explains how to install the standard Nagios plugins distribution from the nagios site.

The only thing I was able to find that even came close, is a tutorial for setting up monitoring network printers. Specifically, HP printers, which is part of the standard Nagios plugins distribution I mentioned above. But, I have already successfully installed Nagios Core, as well as the standard nagios-plugins, and I am able to monitor all my servers, Cisco switches, and even my HP printers (using the check_hpjd plugin). But, I also have Ricoh printers and copiers that I want to monitor, and would also like to try some other additional plugins that have been posted in the community, but I need some documentation to fully understand this and get any 3rd party plugin I choose to work.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[hsmith]

Plugins will go inside of /usr/local/nagios/libexec on a normal installation of core.
The rest kind of depends on the plugin you are trying to install. Most of these can be copied and pasted.

We'll use this check_beer_time.sh plugin for example: https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... sh/details

This is generally a link to their site(dropbox in this case):

If you click on it, it will give you cleartext you can paste into a file inside of your Nagios machine. You'll need to make sure the file you create to put the text inside of is executable. chmod ug+x yourfilename

If the file is a binary, you could also perform a wget against the url:

wget somewebsitewithapluginonit.org/someplugin

Let me know if you have further questions, thank you!

[Jacktivated]

Thank you very much for the reply!

I will go through your example and let you know how I make out.

[Jacktivated]

Plugins will go inside of /usr/local/nagios/libexec on a normal installation of core.
The rest kind of depends on the plugin you are trying to install. Most of these can be copied and pasted.

We'll use this check_beer_time.sh plugin for example: https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... sh/details

This is generally a link to their site(dropbox in this case):

1.png

If you click on it, it will give you cleartext you can paste into a file inside of your Nagios machine. You'll need to make sure the file you create to put the text inside of is executable. chmod ug+x yourfilename

If the file is a binary, you could also perform a wget against the url:

wget somewebsitewithapluginonit.org/someplugin

Let me know if you have further questions, thank you!

So, I just create a file in /usr/local/nagios/libexec and paste the code into it? In the past, when attempting to open an existing file in that directory, it was completely unreadable. So, I assumed there was an additional step that need to take place first, such as the whole make/make install thing, for instance. I haven't been sure of the exact steps to take, and in what order, for new plugins.

A step by step tutorial, which walks you through the whole process of integrating a new plugin into nagios core is what I've been searching the web for, and couldn't find. Your beer time example might be a good initial practice for me, but I'm still not positive of the order of things yet.

Thanks again.

[hsmith]

If it looked like gibberish, it was probably a binary. Something like perl, python, bash, etc... would have looked like cleartext with some code. I'll try to find you a decent write up in the meantime.

[Jacktivated]

If it looked like gibberish, it was probably a binary. Something like perl, python, bash, etc... would have looked like cleartext with some code. I'll try to find you a decent write up in the meantime.

I appreciate that. Thanks.

I've got things running pretty nice with server/network checks and notifications, but now I want to start getting into the community written plugins, and there really isn't anything out there that outlines this for someone new, like myself.

[hsmith]

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ugins.html is pretty much the best we have at the moment. What would you like to see from documentation?

[Jacktivated]

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... ugins.html is pretty much the best we have at the moment. What would you like to see from documentation?

There are just a lot of pieces to this and I would love something I could follow so that I could install any plugin I choose from the community.

For example...
First go to /usr/local/nagios/libexec. Create file named "PLUGINNAME". Make it executable. Then, go to /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects and edit the printer.cfg file, or the command.cfg, template.cfg, contact.cfg...and so on.

It seems like I need to create entries in all of those .cfg files I mentioned above and they all need to reference something in one another in order to make a particular plugin work. And I am getting lost in it all.

I would love to see a couple of examples of an uploaded plugin, that walks you through the installation and implementation step-by-step from beginning to end. Each example covering the different type of plugin you may encounter and how to get it to work.

I hope this helps paint a picture of where I'm at. I know I'm close, but I don't fully understand it all yet.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond.

[Jacktivated]

In particular, and for starters, I'd like to get the check_printer plugin to work so I can monitor my Ricoh printers and not just ping them.

https://exchange.nagios.org/directory/P ... es/details

[Box293]

Have you seen this documentation?

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... nters.html