How do I monitor computers that use DHCP?

[jbruyet]

Hey all, I'd like to be able to monitor many workstations on my network (managers, supervisors, bookkeepers, etc.) but we're using DHCP and sometimes their IP addresses change. Googling this gave me a ton of "other stuff" and searching for DHCP on this forum gave me several pages of material that doesn't apply to my situation. Is there a way to have Nagios use the NetBIOS name rather than the IP address so I don't lose track of the computers?

Thanks,

Joe B

[jsmurphy]

Use a hostname instead of an IP address in your service/host definitions? Do you have internal DNS?

The address field will take any (IP or otherwise) as long as it can use that to resolve the host.

[jbruyet]

Thanks much jsmurphy, it works. I guess I should have experimented a little more with it.

Thanks,

Joe B

[jsmurphy]

You're most welcome, it's somewhat misleading! Most fields in nagios will either take an integer or a string, so with anything that takes a string you can pretty much fill it with whatever you want as long as it's going to resolve to something relevant.