Taking a user input and doing something with it

This support forum board is for support questions relating to Nagios XI, our flagship commercial network monitoring solution.
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hornseym
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:21 am

Taking a user input and doing something with it

Post by hornseym »

Is there are way to take a user input from the XI GUI and do something with it on the server?

Specifically, I'd like to be able to take a user input from the XI GUI, send it back to the server and trigger a script and/or Nagios plugin, passing the user input as an argument.

N.B. I know how to pass argument in; this query is about how I can get a user input from the XI GUI back to the server in a form that I can use it as an argument.

I can think of a way to do this (i.e. write a custom dashlet to take the input, add my own custom URL to Nagios' Apache server and have this URL trigger the script, then have the custom dashlet send the user input to the custom URL). I'm just trying to find out if there's a better way that Nagios XI more obviously supports (the way I'm thinking might not even be possible).

Many thanks.
tmcdonald
Posts: 9117
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:40 am

Re: Taking a user input and doing something with it

Post by tmcdonald »

Well, technically you could do this in the CCM by using the Test Check Command button, but this sort of functionality is somewhat dangerous since you are allowing a user to run arbitrary code on the server. I would say there is not an official or supported way to do this.

We do offer a web-based terminal application in the Enterprise Edition of the software, but that might be a bit overkill for what you want.
Former Nagios employee
hornseym
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2016 6:21 am

Re: Taking a user input and doing something with it

Post by hornseym »

Is "Enterprise Edition" any different from "Nagios XI"? Because we will use this.

Executing arbitrary code from the user on the server would be dangerous, yes, and ideally we don't want to do this.

Ideally we want the user to pick a value from an enumerated list, this value will get sent to the server which will then do something based on this value. If this isn't supported out of the box and I have to use something like a Dashlet or a component to accept the user input, that's fine.

Thanks.
tmcdonald
Posts: 9117
Joined: Mon Sep 23, 2013 8:40 am

Re: Taking a user input and doing something with it

Post by tmcdonald »

The Enterprise Edition is just an extra set of features in XI that require a separate license. There is a trial available if you go to Admin -> License Information.

But basically, you would need to code your own dashlet for this, which is pretty out of scope of what we can support.
Former Nagios employee
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