[Nagiosplug-devel] Working on testcases
Ethan Galstad
nagios at nagios.org
Wed Nov 9 11:12:11 CET 2005
I'm a bit late into this thread, but here are some of my thoughts...
At least one person should be getting notifications for UNKNOWN
states, as they can be important. The UNKNOWN state doesn't really
have a clear definition, but here's what I think it should be used to
signify...
1. Invalid command line args passed to the plugin (e.g. the plugin
doesn't know what to do).
2. Internal failures in the plugin itself which prevent it from
performing a check (i.e. malloc() failures, unexpected system call
failures, or anything else that needs to be done - but fails - before
a check can be performed). As an example, the check_dhcp plugin
returns an UNKNOWN state if it can't determine the local hardware
address or bind to port 68.
3. Nagios will also assign an UNKNOWN state to any
plugin/script/whatever that either doesn't exist on the filesystem or
returns a code that is out-of-bounds in accordance with the plugin
specs.
I think that DNS errors and the like should either result in a
WARNING or (preferably) a CRITICAL state. By specifying a host/DNS
name in the config, the admin has implicity indicated to Nagios/the
plugins that the name should resolve. If for whatever reason it
doesn't, it should be treated as a serious error and the admin should
be notified appropriately.
I don't think there's a real need to add another state type to Nagios
for indicating transport or resolution errors. The existing states
should provide enough to indicate various problems, althought I'm
sure there are different opinions on this. :-)
On 9 Nov 2005 at 13:27, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> Ton Voon wrote:
> >
> > On 7 Nov 2005, at 12:20, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> >
> >> I'd just like to point out that this is in no way incompatible with
> >> the "transport error" service-status, since nagios by default sets
> >> all out-of-bounds return codes to UNKNOWN.
> >>
> >
> > Andreas,
> >
> > Just trying to make your suggestion clear: are you proposing "transport
> > error" as another status from the plugins, but one that Nagios will
> > (currently) support because it will map it onto UNKNOWN?
> >
>
> Yes.
>
> > I'm against adding another state unless absolutely necessary. I don't
> > think there is sufficient difference between UNKNOWN and TRANSPORT_ERROR.
> >
> > And while I agree with the idea of "transport errors", I'm not sure if
> > we agree on the concept. In your previous email, you said "UNKNOWN can
> > be used for user-error only", but then you contradicted yourself by
> > saying when "a dns fails, the service *is* UNKNOWN".
> >
>
> What I meant was that the service isn't in a determined state (i.e.
> "unknown" as humans read the word which isn't necessarily how Nagios
> understands it).
>
> > I wonder if the word "UNKNOWN" is causing problems. Maybe "OTHER" makes
> > more sense meaning "any other failure to stop analysis of the service".
> >
>
> Apparently it does. I don't think a change would be very welcome though.
>
> > Any other opinions? This feels like it could be a big change that could
> > impact how Nagios works so I want to make sure this is the right route
> > to go.
> >
>
> It needs lots and lots of testing. It would probably be better if Nagios
> did something along the lines of
>
> service_status = return_code & 0x3;
> plugin_flags = return_code & ~0x3;
>
> This would mean that plugins would still only have 4 valid exit-codes,
> but could choose to pass on additional information to Nagios which would
> help users determine what went wrong (if the GUI supports it, ofcourse).
>
> I'm not sure if this would break anything for now though, but if it does
> it'll have to wait until there's a new major release (i.e. 3.0). I don't
> think it's worth fiddling with right now.
>
> --
> Andreas Ericsson andreas.ericsson at op5.se
> OP5 AB www.op5.se
> Tel: +46 8-230225 Fax: +46 8-230231
>
>
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>
Ethan Galstad,
Nagios Developer
---
Email: nagios at nagios.org
Website: http://www.nagios.org
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