Nagios Support Forum

We have a fresh install of Nagios Enterprise on a clean CentOS 6 server. We have several contacts and contacts groups defined and have them associated with services accordingly. For the sake of testing, we have one test service generating alerts to one contact group (which contains a few key contacts). All contacts use the same template and setting (in fact we made copies of them in CCM and changes names and emails).

Problems is, we only see emails to some contacts and not others. Nagios status dat file show notifications generated for all contacts. The GUI notificaion page also shows the same thing. But /var/log/maillog shows mail going to only some contacts?

What are we missing?

Strangely enough, I changed the email address for one of the contacts that was working. We dont see email on the updated email but still receive messeges on the previous email address (which does not exists in the nagios text configs that were generated, double checked this by looking at the contact definition)

What version of XI are you on? There were some issues with contacts/contactgroups and cases that was introduced with some ldap features. It was quickly resolved, but if you are on an older version, you may want to upgrade and then test notifications again.

The version is:

Latest Available Version: 2012R2.0
Installed Version: 2012R2.0
Last Update Check: 2013-05-22 12:00:59

Which is the latest version.

What is the difference of using the generic-contact vs xi_contact_generic?

We are also using the latest version of sendmail

We also notice that if we create a contact that is not listed in our ldap server and give it a different (from our company) email address such as [email protected], it does not seem to send it. It will send it to a real ldap user within our domain.

What notification handlers are these contacts using? Are they all just contacts or all also Nagios users, are the Nagios users receiving email and the ones just contacts not? Are you using AD integration for signon?

We switched to generic-contact from xi_contact_generic and notifications work properly.
We have LDAP setup and contact users created internally and they received notifications just fine.
The problem was when sending email out to Pager or External email accounts like gmail.

Do you think its possible a user needs to be created for that?
Also, the problem goes away if we change the contact template...

The core notification handlers will work with pure contacts that do not need to use an smtp relay. If your contacts are also XI users, use the xi notification handlers. If your contacts need to relay through an smtp server, it is best to make them a user as well, or else you will have to configure your mta for an smtp relay.

If it is an issue with sending mail externally, I would actually look at how the mail is being sent. Are you sending via the mta on the local system straight to gmail, or using your internal server as a relay? If you are using the internal server, does it actually allow relaying for domains that it does not control? As most do not by default, to avoid being blacklisted. Also have you verified that the messages that seemed not to get sent were not simply in the spam folders?

abrist wrote:The core notification handlers will work with pure contacts that do not need to use an smtp relay. If your contacts are also XI users, use the xi notification handlers. If your contacts need to relay through an smtp server, it is best to make them a user as well, or else you will have to configure your mta for an smtp relay.

We do not use a SMTP server in the XI settings, just sendmail works fine.

sreinhardt wrote:If it is an issue with sending mail externally, I would actually look at how the mail is being sent. Are you sending via the mta on the local system straight to gmail, or using your internal server as a relay? If you are using the internal server, does it actually allow relaying for domains that it does not control? As most do not by default, to avoid being blacklisted. Also have you verified that the messages that seemed not to get sent were not simply in the spam folders?

Nothing is being filtered for spam etc. The mails process just does not see an email message generated from nagios for certain email emails (but these emails are not users as of yet in XI).
/var/log/maillog will show outgoing mail for some contacts but not all when using XI templates. It shows outgoing mail for ALL contacts when using generic handlers.

This issue can be marked as fixed if there is no harm is leaving it to use generic core notification handlers.

/var/log/maillog will show outgoing mail for some contacts but not all when using XI templates. It shows outgoing mail for ALL contacts when using generic handlers.

Are the people that do no receive notifications, also not users and just contacts? The XI based notification and the ones used for contacts alone, are vastly different. You will need to create users and not just contacts for the people who wish to use alternative contact methods too. If you already have a contact, simply create a new user with the same spelling and uncheck the box to create a contact as well. They should link if done correctly. Then XI notification handlers can be used for them!