[Nagiosplug-devel] Performance values, what to use?

[Ben Clewett]

Karl, I have re-posted to nagiosplug-devel at list.sourceforge.net for some 
fuller discussion.

I do have one comment.  Sending a string as a metric value is not 
something the protocol supports.  I also believe the aim of this 
protocol is to storing numerical performance data.  Which can be 
imported to PP or RRD.  I am not sure that passing a string is a good 
idea.  No plugin currently does this.   Can you explain further why you 
would want to pass a string as a performance metric value?

Regards, Ben.

Karl DeBisschop wrote:

> Ben Clewett wrote:
> 
>> All systems have to use the same format, as specified in the 
>> documentation:
>>
>> http://nagiosplug.sourceforge.net/developer-guidelines.html#AEN185
>>
>> Unfortunately there are holes in this documentation.  I have also seen 
>> requests to amend this documentation to add more features, and patch 
>> up the holes.
> 
> 
> I have somehow missed these discussions.
> 
>> Which have been, for what ever reason, ignored by these news groups.
>>
>> I would personally like to see NULL, -INF and +INF supported as 
>> possible values.  Which PP and RRD can use in their own ways. :)
> 
> 
> I do not remember seeing any concrete proposals to that effect. But I 
> would generally support the addition of token to represent these values.
> 
> Bear in mind that perfdata is not always numeric - it may be a string 
> value. So what ever means are used to encode a token for the above cases 
> must be distinquishable from a text value of (say) NULL that a moniroed 
> application might return.
>