Nagios Support Forum

Hey all,

I've posted once before on this forum regarding the beginning setup for Nagios Core 3.2.3 (http://support.nagios.com/forum/viewtop ... =7&t=24974). The information was helpful, however I have made very little progress regarding getting my initial setup going of just having keep-alives of workstations and their respective parent switches.

I did come across a link (http://users.telenet.be/mydotcom/howto/ ... onfig.html) that structured the directory in an organizational manner, however, I always seem to get stuck on creating a simple host check.

At the present time, I am able to log into the web interface and everything appears to be operating normally in that Nagios can be accessed via the intranet web link. However, when I click on host or hostgroups, etc - I get an error message (see attached). Obviously, this makes sense being that their are no hosts defined. Which brings me back to my original issue - how to properly configure hosts.

What is most amazing to me is the fact that there are NO youtube videos which walks one through installing, setting up, AND monitoring all in one shot for those that are completely new to Nagios (as well as Ubuntu for that matter).

If possible, would someone be willing to perhaps walk me through in getting one or two hosts configures and show me the "ins & outs" of hostgroups and templating. I do realize that is alot, however, I plan on paying it forward by creating my own youtube video which does exactly that type of walktrough.

I am on google talk & aol instant messanger and would be willing to provide web access (via join.me) to assist in the configuration.

Thanks all,
Vince

Ubuntu is one of the easiest installs for nagios, as it is packaged in the aptitude repos. Here are a couple of tutorials for installing it out of quite a few I saw after a quick search:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YdN_oLcKMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSDqMYDF8-k

I'd recommend installing from source, as Ubuntu is not packaging core 4 yet, only 3:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... Source.pdf

There are also loads of guides online, including some videos which cover configuration, you are also going to want to read up on:

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/toc.html

Particularly the "How to" sections.

Looks like you have an issue with your CGI's possibly, unfortunately the packaged install of Nagios in ubuntu can sometimes (based on distro version and core version) be placed in a different location from one release to the next. Lets start here, please provide the output of:

Please see below for the output:

ls -la /etc/nagios3
total 92
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Apr 2 09:18 .
drwxr-xr-x 98 root root 4096 Mar 25 08:43 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1986 Feb 15 2012 apache2.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12218 Feb 15 2012 cgi.cfg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2443 Feb 15 2012 commands.cfg
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Mar 28 08:52 conf.d
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50 Jan 10 09:41 htpasswd.users
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43768 Mar 28 08:07 nagios.cfg
drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 4096 Apr 2 09:34 objects
-rw-r----- 1 root nagios 1293 Feb 15 2012 resource.cfg
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 10 09:41 stylesheets



Test:~$ service nagios status
nagios: unrecognized service


Test:~$ tail -50 /etc/nagios3/var/nagios.log
tail: cannot open `/etc/nagios3/var/nagios.log' for reading: No such file or directory


I'm guessing I should start from a clean slate and carve out a fresh new VM and start from there?

slansing wrote:Ubuntu is one of the easiest installs for nagios, as it is packaged in the aptitude repos. Here are a couple of tutorials for installing it out of quite a few I saw after a quick search:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YdN_oLcKMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSDqMYDF8-k

I'd recommend installing from source, as Ubuntu is not packaging core 4 yet, only 3:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... Source.pdf

There are also loads of guides online, including some videos which cover configuration, you are also going to want to read up on:

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/toc.html

Particularly the "How to" sections.

Looks like you have an issue with your CGI's possibly, unfortunately the packaged install of Nagios in ubuntu can sometimes (based on distro version and core version) be placed in a different location from one release to the next. Lets start here, please provide the output of:

Code: Select all

ls -la /etc/nagios3

Code: Select all

/etc/init.d/nagios3 restart

service nagios status

tail -50 /etc/nagios3/var/nagios.log

Also - What distro of Ubuntu (if its even best to use Ubuntu) works best for Nagios? Any recommendations for a wanna be Linux / Nagios admin?

VincentF wrote:Also - What distro of Ubuntu (if its even best to use Ubuntu) works best for Nagios? Any recommendations for a wanna be Linux / Nagios admin?

Honestly whatever the latest Ubuntu release is should be fine. I think it's 13.10 unless I am missing something. 14.04 should be released shortly. As for "best" that is subjective, but we really like CentOS here. Might not be as easy to learn on, but Ubuntu can teach some sorta bad habits.

tmcdonald wrote:

VincentF wrote:Also - What distro of Ubuntu (if its even best to use Ubuntu) works best for Nagios? Any recommendations for a wanna be Linux / Nagios admin?

Honestly whatever the latest Ubuntu release is should be fine. I think it's 13.10 unless I am missing something. 14.04 should be released shortly. As for "best" that is subjective, but we really like CentOS here. Might not be as easy to learn on, but Ubuntu can teach some sorta bad habits.

TMC - I am going to explore your thought and look into using CentOS as the base OS for my Nagios testing. Being that I am new to Linux in general, I wont feel the growing pains as bad as it could be. Of course, this means having to learn newer commands. Plus, in searching for CentOS / Nagios on google, there seems to be MUCH more clear documentation.

I'll keep you posted...

-Vin

Sounds great, let us know if you run into trouble!

wow - I had to erase whatever I taught myself with Ubuntu commands to deal with CentOS. It's a good thing I didn't wipe out that VM.

Back on to Ubuntu!

::sigh::

VincentF wrote:wow - I had to erase whatever I taught myself with Ubuntu commands to deal with CentOS. It's a good thing I didn't wipe out that VM.

Back on to Ubuntu!

::sigh::

Yea, Ubuntu is like training wheels for Linux =D

Did you need to keep the thread open or did you figure it out?

I really HATE to keep bothering people until I make SOME progress.

To answer your question, I haven't figured out what I am trying to do.

I keep crawling the web, reading books, watching YouTube videos and (carefully) fooling around with the .cfg files to see if I stumble across what I need. One of the cool thing i've read is learning that you can have a parent to a host in a config file which says if the parent (local switch) that is servicing a LAN connection to a host goes down, that can be configures as well. (Pretty cool)

Unfortunately, I learn best by verbal / hands-on with stuff like this.

But, as the one gentleman above said - Patience is allllllllll I need!