How do I use the Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin module?

The Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin Perl module can be obtained from two main locations:

from the Nagios Plugins tarball with an extra configure option
from CPAN

If you install from the Nagios Plugins tarball, the Perl module will be installed in $prefix/perl.

If you install from CPAN, the Perl module will be installed into your Perl's system directories by default.

To write your plugin, you should start it with:

use FindBin;
use lib "$FindBin::Bin/../perl/lib";
use Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin;

This bit of code tells Perl to look for the Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin module in a directory relative to where the plugin is executed - this is a hard dependency. If Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin is not found there, Perl's system directories will be searched.

This approach allows a system administrator to decide whether they want Nagios::Monitoring::Plugin installed via system directories or within the $prefix area of the plugins.