[Nagiosplug-devel] Re: OF nagios plugins

[Gavin Carr]

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 02:35:44PM +0200, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> >>Hack utils.pm, copy over the hacked version after installing the plugins.
> >>That's what I do.  It's not ideal, but it's not a major pain. 
> >
> >Depends how many machines you're talking. And then a new version of 
> >nagios plugins is released, and all your customisations get wiped out.
> >Hmmmm.
> 
> man sed. If you're going to upgrade the plugin package you'll probably 
> have it scripted anyway. I recommend sed 4.0.9 or later, as it supports 
> in-place editing (-i flag) and makes such things a lot easier.

Sure, or perl, or patch for that matter. But all you're doing is automating
a fix that shouldn't be required in the first place. There's a reason that
the /etc tree exists - it's to separate configs from code. Check it out
sometime.

> >>It's not dumb if the makefile is smart enough to figure out the correct
> >>paths needed for each plugin.  In that case it's much easier because the
> >>makefile only has to twiddle utils.pm instead of many plugins. 
> >
> >Two problems with this: one, the smartest makefile in the world is still
> >running at build time, not at install time. So with packages it captures
> >the settings for the packager's system, not the installed system.
> 
> Performance would drop to around 50% if each plugin needs to look for 
> the programs it's supposed to execute. Feel free to fork the nagiosplug 
> project yourself if you don't like it.

No one's suggesting plugins do dynamic searches. I'm suggesting that the
settings should live somewhere else than in a library.

> >Two, utils.pm is a library, so as above it gets upgraded with new versions
> >and my customisations get wiped out. Sure such things should be abstracted,
> >but into a config file of some kind that is explicitly not automatically
> >upgraded.
> 
> utils.pm is a bloody textfile. It might change, but variable names will 
> not. man sed. Besides, what's the point of upgrading if things are 
> already working fine? If you're just upgrading without needing/wanting 
> any new features (or to get rid of bugs, obviously), you really should 
> get yourself a hobby.

Wow, powerful argument - "I know, if upgrading breaks things, maybe don't
upgrade." Wish I'd thought of that.

-G