functioning of Nagios XML Engine

[chitrangada]

Hi

I am new to this tool.

Btw, I have installed nagios and NXE on my server. I want to insert data in nagios database when i create a check on my site. Can you please guide me how to do that?
I tried the other plugins like check_http, check_ping etc via command line and they are rendering result too. But how to work with NXE and how to insert my check details in Nagios database?

[abrist]

You may be looking at the wrong tool. If you want to create checks with the web ui, you should look at nagiosql. The xml engine is more for output formatting, though there are some limited options to run commands through the command pipe via an XML post, but this will not let you create new checks.

[chitrangada]

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I have installed NagiosQL. I read the online documentation for it and tried the demo too. As per my understanding, to create new hosts, services, hostnames etc we just need to define the respective thing i.e. for service i have to define that particular service into the service.cfg and so on.
I am just confused with the download config file feature which you have in the demo site i.e. http://demo.nagiosql.org/nagiosql_en/admin/services.php, that do we create config file for every service we create or we will maintain a single file to keep all services together ?

Thanks in advance

Chitrangada

[abrist]

I am just confused with the download config file feature which you have in the demo site

NagiosQL is an open source project and is not maintained by Nagios Enterprises.

do we create config file for every service we create or we will maintain a single file to keep all services together ?

You do not need to use the download config option, it is an option for archiving/saving the config to a file. NagiosQL already writes out your config files from the database. In fact, NagiosQL should maintain your files for you, and it is best practice to make your edits through the QL interface.

[chitrangada]

Hi

I need your guidance to create host and service with respect to that host. I read an article to edit the config files of nagios 'http://www.debian-administration.org/ar ... r_Networks' . Is it ok to edit the main config files directly?

I have installed Nagios3 on my debian server.
Please help.

Thanks

[slansing]

If you are using Nagios Core, you can edit the .cfg host and service files directly from the command line. This should be how you create, remove, and edit them by default.

[chitrangada]

Okay,

But i am using Nagios3 with nconf. But not getting how to edit the config files by my code. I dont want to use the web interface it provides.

Thanks

[abrist]

If you do not want to use the webui configuration tool from nconf, are you using any other features from nconf (like multiple collectors or presets)? If not, you may want to remove nconf as it will complicate the manual editing of nagios core config files .

[chitrangada]

Thanks for your reply.

Can you please tell me how does Nagios work? I read so much about the work flow means it monitors firstly the service and then host and then the parent of host. And in this way it notifies the respective admin of that check about the status of that node.
Actually I want to know how nagios bring data in the webUI(please have a look at the screenshot) ? Does it maintain any database OR it is online?

Thanks in advance.

[abrist]

Pure vanilla core reads flat config files on service start and builds an objects.cache file/in memory to read from for checks. Results are logged to the nagios.log file. The frontend uses cgis to pull data from these files and build the html. This is just vanilla though.

There are a number of addons that change this base functionality:

Nagiosql - A database for config files and a frontend ui for managing them
ndoutils(ndo2db) - Stores checkresults in a db.
kklivestatus - A different broker for handling of checks. Much faster than the vanilla broker, but more prove to issues.
V-Shell - Alternative frontend designed in php. Still makes calls to the cgis though.

Nagios XI (shameless plug) - A php frontend with mysql databases for checkresults and configs, as well as a myriad of different components from reporting to bulk modifications, opscreens, and business process intelligence plugins.