Nagios XI - Manual Config File Management

Purpose

This document is intended to describe how to manually maintain external object configuration files with Nagios XI.

External object configuration files are object definitions which are processed by Nagios XI but are not maintained or managed using the Nagios XI web GUI or configuration database.

External configuration files can be either created from scratch and manually maintained or generated from an external source such as an SVN server.

This functionality is useful if you have a large number of static object definitions which you want to monitor with your Nagios XI system but do not need to maintain via Nagios XI.

Target Audience

This document is intended for use by experienced Nagios Administrators who wish to manually manage parts of their Nagios XI configuration, such as host and service definitions.

Directory Location

All manual object configuration files should be stored in the following directory on your Nagios XI server:

/usr/local/nagios/etc/static

Configuration files in this directory are processed by the monitoring engine (Nagios Core), but are not imported into the Nagios XI web configuration GUI.

*** IMPORTANT: If you make any changes in /usr/local/nagios/etc/static, you MUST follow the steps below so that a config snapshot is taken, and the static changes are included in the config snapshot for when the apply config fails in the CCM.

Verifying Your Configuration

First, make sure the configuration validates successfully. Use the following command to verify your manually-maintained Nagios Core configuration files:

/usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

Check the command output for any error messages. If there are configuration errors, you would need to resolve them first. Please read the Resolving Configuration Errors section below to learn how.

Restarting Nagios Service and Creating a Config Snapshot

If there are no configuration errors, restart the nagios service by running the following command on the Nagios XI server:

/usr/local/nagiosxi/scripts/reconfigure_nagios.sh

This command will take a config snapshot as well as restart the nagios service. It is essentially the same as applying configuration.

Resolving Configuration Errors

To resolve errors with manually-maintained configuration files, make sure to read and follow directions for maintaining object configuration definitions in the Nagios Core manual. You can download the latest version of the Nagios Core manual from the following URL:

Documentation - Nagios Core Manual

Final Thoughts

For any support related questions please visit the Nagios Support Forums at:

http://support.nagios.com/forum/