Difference in Flap vs. Obsess

[agentguerry]

Can someone help me understand the difference in flap vs. obsess?

Is Obsess needed for basic monitoring services?

thank you!

[tmcdonald]

Obsessing isn't really used that often, and can be quite a load increase on the server. It's not really related to flapping in any direct way. Obsess just lets you run a command after every check. Flapping is used to determine if a service is rapidly going between an OK and a non-OK state rapidly, and is good for cutting down on notifications.

http://superuser.com/questions/750278/n ... -this-mean

[jolson]

Obsess is not needed for basic monitoring - some detail can be found in our documentation: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... tions.html

In short:

obsess_over_host *: This directive determines whether or not checks for the host will be "obsessed" over using the ochp_command.

ohcp command:
This option allows you to specify a command to be run after every host check, which can be useful in distributed monitoring. This command is executed after any event handler or notification commands. The command argument is the short name of a command definition that you define in your object configuration file. The maximum amount of time that this command can run is controlled by the ochp_timeout option. More information on distributed monitoring can be found here. This command is only executed if the obsess_over_hosts option is enabled globally and if the obsess_over_host directive in the host definition is enabled.

Obsessing has to do with running a command after every host check. Flapping is the configuration option which will try and detect hosts and services that are "flapping".

Please follow the above link to learn more about the differences between flapping and obsessing. Thank you!

[agentguerry]

Thanks to both of you.
That really explained it in easier terms to understand.

Very much appreciated!

[jolson]

No problem! I will lock this thread and mark it as complete - if you have any further questions, please feel free to open new threads for them. Thank you!

Jesse