Host Check Ping Performance Values Seem Way Too High

[silverbenz]

Hi all,

Just received these two alerts:

***** Nagios *****

Notification Type: PROBLEM
Host: AUCERCSC-R03
State: DOWN
Address: a.b.c.d
Info: PING CRITICAL - Packet loss = 50%, RTA = 7097.30 ms

Date/Time: Fri Feb 8 06:25:30 EST 2013

Followed by:

***** Nagios *****

Notification Type: RECOVERY
Host: AUCERCSC-R03
State: UP
Address: a.b.c.d
Info: PING WARNING - Packet loss = 75%, RTA = 4266.92 ms

Date/Time: Fri Feb 8 06:26:00 EST 2013

Looking at the "Info" line in both of these messages I'm wondering how an RTA of 4266.92ms and a packet loss of 75% is possibly OK? Is the Host check is simply looking for a response to the echo-request? If so, is anyone able to tell me why there's performance info associated with the result when Nagios appears to ignore it? Bit confused.

Cheers,
Ben.

[jsmurphy]

Well... what's OK is dependent upon what you have configured to be OK. You can tell the ping check to care about RTA or Packet loss or RTA and packet loss... it's entirely up to you as to what's an acceptable level of attenuation and loss on a link.

Have a look at your commands.cfg for your check_ping and check-host-alive definitions, there may also be additional details configured in your ping service definition. Have a play with check_ping/check_icmp in your /usr/local/nagios/libexec/ folder to learn about all of the available options you can configure.

[abrist]

What full check command are you using for this icmp check, as jsmurphy pointed out, you may have some odd settings for your warning and critical levels.

[silverbenz]

Thanks guys. I'll have a closer look at those settings and return if I still have questions.

[abrist]

No problem, best of luck.