[Nagiosplug-devel] Check_ping question

[Robert Nelson]

>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.

FWIW, when I commented out the line that sets the timeout to (crta in seconds * packets + packets) if it's larger than the timeout value, essentially choosing the explicitly set timeout value as the override, things still work. If my timeout is 5 seconds, after 5 seconds, the /bin/ping process is killed and the plugin returns a CRITICAL "plugin timed out" error - just like it did before after 18 seconds.

The command called by check_ping is:

/bin/ping -n -U [-c <numpackets>]

The plugin does not pass -i to ping, or any sort of timeout value. The *only* modification I made to the source were commenting the three aforementioned lines. System info:

[bambam]# uname -a
Linux bambam 2.4.20-18.8smp #1 SMP Thu May 29 07:20:32 EDT 2003 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


Rob Nelson