[Nagiosplug-devel] Check_ping question

[Andreas Ericsson]

Robert Nelson wrote:
>>> Yes, but what I'm really looking for is a real
>>> "check-host-alive". I don't want a status report, I just want a
>>> PASS/FAIL result. Since Nagios seems configured to use check_ping
>>> for it, I am not looking for it to be an iterative plugin in this
>>> case.
>>> 
>> 
>> I'm working on writing a check_host_alive plugin, which will be
>> able to do just this.
> 
> 
> I'm very interested in this, please let me know when you've got
> something I might be able to download/test...assuming you're making
> this for the public domain, of course. :)
> 

It will. I'll put it at http://oss.op5.se when I'm done with it.

> 
>> It isn't overridden. It's just prioritized lower than the timeout
>> value specified in the threshold values for programmatical reasons.
>> 
> 
> 
> What I mean is, if I specify a timeout, I don't care what the
> programmer thinks of my timeout value - the program should use the
> value I gave it. Otherwise, that flag is pretty much useless. Not to
> sound too righteous, but a "user specified flag" that gets ignored
> isn't really allowing the user to specify squat :)
> 

You need to keep in mind that both values come from you. One of them 
needs to be clobbered by the other, so the coder just had to choose one.

If indeed the system ping is passed the -i flag as the sum of 
critical_rta_threshold * packets_to_send then using the timeout value 
specified with -t flag to check_ping would result zombied ping processes 
and UNKNOWN return code for check_ping, since it can't parse output 
until ping is done. That's not something a healthy plugin throws at your 
system.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Lead Developer