[Nagiosplug-devel] [ nagiosplug-Bugs-3080984 ] unexpected behavior related to check_nt timeout option

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Bugs item #3080984, was opened at 2010-10-04 12:19
Message generated for change (Tracker Item Submitted) made by bthielsen
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Category: Argument proccessing
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: bthielsen (bthielsen)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: unexpected behavior related to check_nt timeout option

Initial Comment:
the check_nt program lists in it's usage statement:


 -t, --timeout=INTEGER
   Seconds before connection attempt times out (default: 10)

however, some testing seems to indicate that value is used as tenths of a second:

time ./check_nt -t 5 -H socks -p 12489 -s xxxxxxxxxxxx -v COUNTER -l "\Memory\Available Bytes"
No data was received from host!
could not fetch information from server
real	0m0.428s
user	0m0.003s
sys	0m0.010s

time ./check_nt -t 10 -H socks -p 12489 -s xxxxxxxxxxxx -v COUNTER -l "\Memory\Available Bytes"
No data was received from host!
could not fetch information from server
real	0m0.938s
user	0m0.001s
sys	0m0.017s

# time ./check_nt -t 11 -H socks -p 12489 -s xxxxxxxxxxxx -v COUNTER -l "\Memory\Available Bytes"
No data was received from host!
could not fetch information from server
real	0m1.035s
user	0m0.002s
sys	0m0.009s

# time ./check_nt -t 12 -H socks -p 12489 -s xxxxxxxxxxxx -v COUNTER -l "\Memory\Available Bytes"
185975000
real	0m1.122s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.011s

i'm not sure though if this is unintended behavior or just a typo in the usage statement.

as a related note, this was discovered as part of a troubleshooting process.  as you can see, none of the commands are taking anywhere near the ten second default, so the timeout being a culprit wasn't initially considered.  if the command had been a bit more informative when failing (e.g. something like "No data was received from host! (timeout exceeded)", it would have been very helpful and probably would have saved quite a bit of time.

# ./check_nt -V
check_nt v1991 (nagios-plugins 1.4.13)

# lsb_release -a
LSB Version:	:core-3.1-ia32:core-3.1-noarch:graphics-3.1-ia32:graphics-3.1-noarch
Distributor ID:	CentOS
Description:	CentOS release 5.4 (Final)
Release:	5.4
Codename:	Final

# uname -a
Linux hostname.example.com 2.6.18-164.11.1.el5 #1 SMP Wed Jan 20 07:39:04 EST 2010 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

regards,
-ben

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