Nagios Support Forum

I have some exceptions as far as groups are concerned which need to have
a specific monitor added. I don't want to create a new host group.

I could define the service in the services.cfg one for each host, but I am
looking to take up less space in the file.

Currently:

define service {
service_description abcabcabc
host_name a
check_command some_command!some!para!meters
use some-service
}

And I have several hosts to do.

Attempts to make the above

host_name a,b

to cover the 2 hosts with the service have failed.

So I am asking, what is the best way for 2-3 hosts to do the above?
I tried various ideas

host_name a,b

and two

host_name a
host_name b

But nothing seemed to really do it. I've ended up doing two define services one
for each host, instead of creating arbitrary hostgroups which it will eventually be,
obviously.

I'm a bit confused. Are you just trying to assign a single service identically to multiple hosts? If so, you just give a comma-separated list of hostnames:

host_name: This directive is used to specify the short name(s) of the host(s) that the service "runs" on or is associated with. Multiple hosts should be separated by commas.