Nagios Support Forum

Are you typing it exactly as su-nagios? Because if so you are missing the necessary spaces it should be su - nagios

Though it is weird that it would even execute without the spaces it shouldn't recognize that as a command. Is there even a user called nagios? if you do an ls -l on /usr/local/nagios/bin who owns the files?

On a related note: I hate shell script checks .

Yup, the nagios user exists. I still can't 'su - nagios' though.

-rwxrwxr-- 1 nagios nagios 592488 2010-05-05 14:54 nagios
-rwxrwxr-- 1 nagios nagios 46772 2010-05-05 14:54 nagiostats
-rwxr-xr-- 1 nagios nagios 26436 2010-11-26 09:39 npcd
-rwxr-xr-- 1 nagios nagios 13764 2010-11-26 09:39 npcdmod.o
-rwxrwxr-x 1 nagios nagios 116674 2012-07-17 17:49 nrpe

If you vi /etc/passwd is the nagios users shell set to /bin/false (the shell is the last field)? If it is change it to /bin/bash, then attempt to su again.

The last line was set to /bin/false. I changed it to /bin/bash but still can't 'su - nagios'. Tried rebooting. The command executes (no error) but a whoami still shows root. Here is how the passwd file looks now.

root0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
daemon1:1:daemon:/usr/sbin:/bin/sh
bin2:2:bin:/bin:/bin/sh
sys3:3:sys:/dev:/bin/sh
sync4:65534:sync:/bin:/bin/sync
games5:60:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
man6:12/var/cache/man:/bin/sh
lp7:7:lp:/var/spool/lpd:/bin/sh
mail8:8:mail:/var/mail:/bin/sh
news9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
uucp10:10:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:/bin/sh
proxy13:13:proxy:/bin:/bin/sh
www-data33:33:www-data:/var/www:/bin/sh
backup34:34:backup:/var/backups:/bin/sh
list38:38:Mailing List Manager:/var/list:/bin/sh
irc39:39:ircd:/var/run/ircd:/bin/sh
gnats41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/bin/sh
nobody65534:65534:nobody:/nonexistent:/bin/sh
libuuid100:101::/var/lib/libuuid:/bin/sh
syslog101:103::/home/syslog:/bin/false
landscape102:105::/var/lib/landscape:/bin/false
bind103:108::/var/cache/bind:/bin/false
roshan1000Roshan Shiwcharran,,,:/home/roshan:/bin/bash
nagios105:116::/var/lib/nagios:/bin/false
sshd106:65534::/var/run/sshd:/usr/sbin/nologin
postfix104:114::/var/spool/postfix:/bin/false
ntop107:117::/var/lib/ntop:/bin/false
snmp108:65534::/var/lib/snmp:/bin/bash

It's still bin false? Or did you change it back to bin false? Or did the reboot change it back to bin false?

nagios105:116::/var/lib/nagios:/bin/false

You shouldn't need to reboot after changing the users default shell at any rate. If you have a valid shell I'm not sure what else would cause that behaviour, what distro are you using? It smells suspiciously like Ubuntu.

You could also try "chsh -s /bin/bash nagios" which is another way of changing the default shell.

Sorry for the late reply, I was on vaca.
Okay, I am able to run the command as nagios now (I was modifying the wrong line) and it runs fine. So it's just when the Nagios server runs it that it messes up. Maybe there's something wrong with my command.cfg lines -

define command{
command_name check_exchange_webmail
command_line /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_exchange_webmail.sh -H $HOSTADDRESS$
}

...or my windows.cfg -

define service{
use generic-service
host_name [server name]
service_description STORE and WEBMAIL
check_command check_exchange_webmail
}

I was about to give up all hope, then I realised that you have a -H switch in your commands.cfg... yet there's no -H in the instructions on nagios exchange just the macro for the host address. Remove the -H from your config and then see how you go?

You are THE MAN!!!!!!
Removing -H works! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

Well we got there eventually glad that solved your problem!