Nagios Support Forum

This has probably been covered before, but my search-foo is failing me this afternoon..

I'm trying to wrap my head around inheritance when it comes to contacts, contact groups, hosts, and services. If I understand correctly, services will only inherit the contacts/contact groups from a host IF the service contacts/contact groups are null. Is that accurate?

Is there any way to both inherit from the host and allow additions to the contacts? There are a number of situations where that would be incredibly handy and prevent having to create numerous service definitions for the same check because the contact list is different based on host.

Thanks!

The local object will always take precedence. Some options do not apply over all objects (for example: check periods are limited to host/service objects and groups etc.), so be aware of that fact.

The general order of precedence is as follows:

1. contact object itself
2. contactgroup
3. contact template
3. service object itself
4. servicegroup
5. service template
6. host object itself
7. hostgroup
8. host template
9. Defaults

Ok, good information to know..

I'm specifically looking for how to deal with hosts and services. I'm trying to prevent having to create a bunch of services with the same check just to handle a different set of contacts. There are a few situations where I have users that need to be notified about specific services, but not all of them. So while I can add them to the host and have the service inherit the host contacts, that doesn't work for all services.

Is there a way to inherit the contacts from a host and also add/delete contacts for the service itself?

I would suggest using service templates with different contact settings for your situation. These can be applied on a per service basis.