Nagios Support Forum

Hello guys, looking for help where the status.dat and retention.dat file are not being re-created after nagios service restart.

- when running pre-fly check with -v and nagios.cfg I get all ok no errors or warnings
- turned on debug mode and there are no warnings or errors in nagios.debug log file
- Nagios core was running absolutely fine without any issue but after a restart I'm seeing this issue
- permissions are ok on the path and as well on the files when I try to touch the files with nagios user
- tried to re-install nagios core to same and to newer version, still no luck (with prior cleanup of nagios path)
- when I restart the nagios service it does not return any error it restarts the service however it does not re-create the status.dat and retention.dat file
- the service restart itself take too long for sure compared to what it was before
- path for status.dat and retention.dat are configured ok in nagios.cfg

There are no perms issues, pre-fly check does not return any error or warning.Of course the gui returns Error: Could not read host and service status information! when there are these two dat files missing which are being read by cgi/php.

Thank you for any input.

Hi @Butters, thanks for reaching out. Let's start by just looking at the retention.dat issue.

Since you have debugging turned on, can you post the part of the log starting ?

Also, is there anything in nagios.log referencing "retention"?

Lastly, I would make sure there's a temp_file directive in your nagios.cfg, and I'd verify whether there's a file with a name like nagios.tmpXXXXXX in that directory, and what the permissions are on that file. I could maybe see a situation where that temporary file gets incorrect permissions and then we fail to write to that file, stopping the retention/status data from being written altogether.

Let me know if that gets you anywhere interesting, and feel free to post any other comments/questions/concerns.

-Sebastian Wolf

Identified the issue is with bug 861

https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/na ... issues/861

don't want to say but seems like this bug fix was maybe missed in releases version 4.4.10???

strace shows

kill(15009, 0) = -1 ESRCH (No such process)
clone(child_stack=NULL, flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD, child_tidptr=0x7f29b75d2a10) = 15318
close(3) = 0
close(3) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor)

when a extra line added

check_for_updates=0 into nagios.cfg

then the nagios pid is able to generate status.dat and retention.dat files. Once again I\m running 4.4.10 which should include the previous bug fixes.

That's interesting. The original bug there is that Core actually SIGSEGV's when trying to check for updates. That issue is definitely fixed.

If check_for_updates=0 fixes your problem, then there's certainly some follow-up work I'll need to do. Is there any chance I could have you DM me the full strace output?

Hello Sebastian, shared the full strace over PM.

Hi @Butters, acknowledging receipt of your strace log - thanks! I've also created an issue at https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/na ... issues/927 to help track this.

I recommend using tools like `strace` or `lsof` to trace system calls or check for open files respectively during Nagios startup. Retro Bowl

Butters wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 12:01 pm Identified the issue is with bug 861

https://github.com/NagiosEnterprises/na ... issues/861 fnf week 8

don't want to say but seems like this bug fix was maybe missed in releases version 4.4.10???

strace shows

kill(15009, 0) = -1 ESRCH (No such process)
clone(child_stack=NULL, flags=CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID|CLONE_CHILD_SETTID|SIGCHLD, child_tidptr=0x7f29b75d2a10) = 15318
close(3) = 0
close(3) = -1 EBADF (Bad file descriptor)

when a extra line added

check_for_updates=0 into nagios.cfg

then the nagios pid is able to generate status.dat and retention.dat files. Once again I\m running 4.4.10 which should include the previous bug fixes.

I really want to know if you have resolved this issue yet?

Hello @otisjame,

It seems the underlying issue is not yet solved, but if you take a look at the issue, you can set check_for_updates=0 in your Nagios Core configuration file and the files will be created properly on restart of Nagios Core.