Nagios Support Forum

Right now it seems that all our passive services notify on the first critical check. Is it possible to have it instead enter a soft state for some number of checks?

Passive services are generally always hard states, and will notify immediately unless you specify a wait time in the host/service configuration. This would be done through Configure > CCM > Services > "Service Name" > Check Settings / Alert Settings.

So suppose the passive check is running off a cron schedule of everything 3 minutes. Also suppose that the notify delay is set for 4 minutes.

Now, a critical check comes in, service goes into critical state but doesn't notify because it will wait 4 minutes. Now, 3 minutes later another check comes in, and this check is an OK result.

Will the service notify at the end of the 4 minutes? Or will it not notify because the service got an OK check within the wait time?

Because the state change is altered back to OK it should not send the critical. It could however send a recovery as this is not a soft state, and all passive states are hard regardless of the delay.