Nagios Support Forum

Starting this past Saturday, we started getting flooded with emails for host/services with just the $ for Service and State.
Many of these hosts when checked have no services in warning nor critical state. We've made no changes to any configs and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme / reason to why we are getting these that I can find so far. No outstanding "Apply Config" and a validation check via CLI shows no issues.

***** Nagios Monitor XI Alert *****

Notification Type: PROBLEM

Service: $
Host: fss-pas6
Address: fss-pas6
State: $

Date/Time: Tue Jan 13 09:55:55 MST 2026

Additional Info:

$

Hi @clangbecker,

On this one I'd consider putting in a support ticket. They'll be able to troubleshoot at a deeper level than the Nagios dev team does on the forum.

As always, community members are welcome to weigh in here as well.

Aaron

Hello @clangbecker,

I think I might have a lead on the cause for this. In between these emails with just '$', are you still getting emails with regular values?

What may be happening is that macros are being passed through invalid on strange occasions, which is triggering an email to be sent since it thinks it's broken.

Thank you for your patience,
~ Ben Rowan

browan wrote: ↑Thu Jan 15, 2026 12:01 pm Hello @clangbecker,

I think I might have a lead on the cause for this. In between these emails with just '$', are you still getting emails with regular values?

What may be happening is that macros are being passed through invalid on strange occasions, which is triggering an email to be sent since it thinks it's broken.

Thank you for your patience,
~ Ben Rowan

Thanks Ben, yes we are getting valid emails as well. I tried doing a rebuild this morning and that didn't help at all. I'm not sure how the macros got in a bad state (happened on a Saturday so no one was messing with anything) and I'm def not sure how to fix them if they are in a bad state. I think I will throw in the towel and burn a support ticket for this one as these emails are getting out of hand.

Thanks!

Could there be any changes in the network environment or supporting components that might be affecting the notification system of Nagios?