Host Status -Unknown

[riredondo]

hello,

i've been looking for the supporting documents that explains for the "unknown" status for hosts and services and no luck, either i didn't look on the right site or there is no specific document for it. can someone explain this to me please? thanks.

looking forward for your usual support.

[lmiltchev]

To handle situations when a service is down for a very short time, or the test
has temporarily failed, soft states were introduced. When the status of a check is
unknown, or it is different from the previous one, Nagios will retest the host or
service several times to make sure that the change is persistent. The number of
checks is specified in the host or service configuration. Nagios assumes that the
new result is a soft state. After additional tests have verified that the new state is
permanent, it is considered a hard state.

Also, see this:
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/nagi ... types.html

[riredondo]

lmiltchev,

so unknown state is being triggered if the check did not fall into either up or down? am i right?

what then is the best interpretation on the following report related to the unknown state?

[nscott]

An UNKNOWN state usually means the plugin was completely unable to determine that status. Common causes of this:

1) Plugin was called incorrectly
2) Necessary libraries not available for the plugin to use

Its up to the programmer discretion, but thats generally what the UNKNOWNS are caused by. Try running the plugin with the exact command line arguments that Nagios will run it with and see what kind of output that gives.