[Nagiosplug-devel] Obsoleted contrib and tarballs files

[Andreas Ericsson]

Ethan Galstad wrote:
> On 26 Jun 2005 at 22:33, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> 
> 
>>sean finney wrote:
>>
>>>hey,
>>>
>>>On Fri, Jun 10, 2005 at 12:17:08PM +0200, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>check_rbl.c, rblcheck* - abusive and cause for black-listing (which
>>>>is funny, since they check for blacklisted domains)
>>>
>>>
>>>abusive because of the typical frequency, or what?
>>>
>>
>>Yes. I'm not completely positive how it works, but being run with a 15
>>minute interval makes it stop working after about 3 hours. It also
>>pollutes the black-lists.
>>
>>
>>>>check_mem.pl - easily obsoleted by a fork of check_swap (or
>>>>__progname logic).
>>>
>>>
>>>then i'll leave this around until then.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>check_timeout.c - should really be in nagios/testing of the nagios
>>>>core distribution, or dropped completely.
>>>
>>>
>>>don't know enough about what this one does.
>>>
>>
>>It times out. It can't do any competent work and is designed only to
>>test Nagios' capability of slaying misbehaving plugins. I have a few
>>other plugins which are equally useless for end users, so I'll submit
>>them to the core project or perhaps build a small tarball of my own.
>>It should only be used by very few very devoted beta-testers, so it's
>>probably best to keep them separated from anything resembling "live"
>>plugins.
>>
> 
> 
> Timing out can be useful, and not just for debugging purposes.  This 
> should definitely stay in the plugin distribution - I'm not planning 
> on taking any plugins back into the main Nagios distribution.

I'll set up a different testing release then. Distributing it with the 
sane plugins that aren't exclusively for testing doesn't make much sense 
if you ask me, as only core testers will be able to make any use of it 
at all.

>  If its still there, check_dummy should stay as well.
> 

check_dummy has real uses (forcing stale passive checks to be something 
without using much load) and such, so that's a bit different.

> Also, it seems like there should be more input from plugin developers 
> and users before a whole swath of plugins gets nuked from the CVS 
> repository.  Unless the complete functionality of some of the 
> deceased plugins is implemented by the remaining survivors, why 
> should they be removed?  Sure, check_ftpget.pl and check_dl_size.pl 
> (for example) may be insecure or inefficient, but so what if those 
> are the things you need to monitor as an admin?

I don't know if you followed the thread from start, but all of the nuked 
plugins are obsoleted by official ones which have been extended since 
the contrib ones were contributed. All of them were also notoriously 
ugly in code and many of them suffered from lots of hardcoded paths and 
variables. Bringing them up to official standards would have taken more 
time than anyone can politely be asked to spend, and given their very 
narrow usage I think it's safe to say that noone would ever have done it.

That said, if someone wants to check downloads from an FTP-site, I'll be 
happy to write a (much faster, safer and cleaner) version in C. Given 
the simplicity of the FTP protocol it shouldn't take much longer than 
20-30 minutes.

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