Category Archives: Site News

Nagios Plugins 2.0 Released

The Nagios Plugins Development Team is proud to announce that nagios-plugins 2.0 has been released and is available for download.  In addition to numerous bug fixes and new options, we have included a new plugin – check_uptime (only supported on Linux at the moment – more platforms to follow in the future).

ADDITIONS

  • check_uptime – New plugin (only supports Linux due to dependency on clock.gettime()).  More supported platforms to follow.

ENHANCEMENTS

  • check_mysql_query – Added performance data (sreinhardt)
  • check_file_age – New option -i/–ignore-missing which returns OK if file is missing (waja)
  • check_nt – Added performance data to UPTIME -l seconds|minutes|hours|days (abrist)
  • check_hpjd – New -p option for port specification (abrist)
  • check_disk – new -n option for multi-line output (tmcnag)
  • check_mysql_query – New -f/-g options for reading for mysql options file (awiddersheim)
  • check_mailq – New -M option for nullmailer support in the mailserver (Luca Corti)
  • check_dig – New -r option for specifying number of retries (abrist)
  • check_ntp_peer – Added state output for each checked metric (abrist)
  • check_dns – Warning and critical thresholds added to perfdata (jccomputing) (abrist)
  • check_dns – New -q options for several query types (AAAA,TXT,SRV,MX) (sreinhardt)
  • check_tcp – Status output now includes hostname when host_specified is set (madrisan)
  • check_mysql – New -n/–ignore_auth option to ignore authentication failure (Julius Kriukas)
  • check_ssh – New -P/–remote-protocol option to monitor the ssh protocol version (monitoring-user)
  • check_ntp – New -o/–time-offset option to compensate for the ntp server’s offset relative to the local server (monitoring-user)
  • configure.ac – Added support for –disable-maintainer-mode (weiss)

FIXES

  • check_http – The -C option no longer resets SSL version if e.g. -S 1 -C 5 is specified
  • check_ide_smart – Now defaults to nagios-compatible output (sreinhardt)
  • Fixed misleading timeout message for non-network plugins (sreinhardt)
  • check_swap – Now fails with 100% usage and a new status output when swap is disabled or missing (abrist)
  • check_ifstatus – Removed commas from perfdata – should now output valid perfdata in nagios format (waja)
  • check_ping – Now gracefully handle the “time of day goes back” error.  This issue is rare, most will not notice the change (waja)
  • check_disk – Help output was clarified that it supports mount paths or partitions instead of just paths and partitions (waja)
  • check_ide_smart – Fixed attribute comparison (waja)
  • check_ntp_time – Fixed average time calculation (larsi)
  • NPTest.cache – Empty or Missing file no longer blocks writing to the file (dermoth)
  • parse.ini – Fixed newlines in output (dermoth)
  • check_dig – Fixed wrong IPv6 arguments order (Stéphane Bortzmeyer)
  • check_dig – Now honors timeout value specified by switch -t (Jethro Carr) (abrist)
  • configure.in – Renamed to configure.ac to avoid deprecation warning (abrist)
  • configure.ac – The option –enable-extra-opts is now enabled by default (dermoth)
  • check_snmp – Now handles negative values properly (Stephane Lapie)

WARNINGS

  • check_procs – Now ignores its parent process to avoid unexpected results when invoked via certain shells
  • utils.sh – No longer defines ECHO (weiss)
  • check_ide_smart now default to nagios output, -n kept for legacy support (sreinhardt)
  • check_ntp_peer – Status output changed, now includes individual state for offset, truechimers, stratum, and jitter (abrist)
  • check_tcp – Status output has changed, now includes hostname (madrisan)

TESTS

  • check_procs – Performance data tests added (dermoth)
  • check_snmp – Added tests for negative thresholds (dermoth)
  • check_hpjd – Added tests for port options (abrist)
  • check_dns – Added new tests for query types (abrist)
  • check_pop – Added option to enable ssl for the test (abrist)
  • check_jabber – Fixed status output tests to account for hostname (abrist)
  • check_procs – Tests no longer fail if uid 501 is not present (sni)
  • check_mysql – Test prompts clarified (dermoth)
  • check_file_age – Added tests for –ignore-missing (waja)

OTHER

  • Numerous small typos fixed.
  • Help output has been changed in many places for clarity and verbosity.

Thanks to all who have contributed toward this release. If you need assistance installing or using the plugins, please visit our general support forum. Bug reports, feature requests, and additional comments are welcome and may be posted to our plugin development forum.

Uncomfortable Info On The Plugin Team Changes

Change isn’t always easy, but sometimes its necessary. Recently, the Nagios Plugins website and team have undergone some changes, and for good reason.  There have been a few people who have caused a stir about the changes, and there’s been some misunderstanding as to the reasons behind those changes, so we thought we’d share some relevant info with the community.

The changes were made because there was an organized effort by some individuals to undermine the project and move people to another solution.  Some of the previous team members decided “recently” to switch development to a new project after we started to employ some changes.  Except their decision to switch wasn’t recent – they made it months ago.  This can be evidenced in part by their Git commits which show them beginning to make a switch as early as last September.  You’ll notice the screenshot below showing a change that was made to start transitioning the Nagios plugins project to a new domain and project (original URL).

plugin-swtich

In addition to this and other similar changes, some of the previous team members started promoting competitors of Nagios in an effort to move people away from the project.  Our attempts to get a response from the previous team lead on multiple occasions to clarify what was happening was met with silence.  So we acted.

We stepped in to prevent these individuals from subverting the project.  We’ll do what we need to do to preserve the various Nagios projects from people and companies with ulterior motives.

Its been an interesting study to watch what some people try to get away with in order to promote their ulterior motives.  One example of this is the outright lies and FUD promoted by Michael Friedrich, as can be seen in his calls for the Fedora/RedHat maintainers to automatically switch Nagios users to a competing solution.  Not surprising that Michael works for Netways GmbH – the same company that recently wrongfully filed Nagios trademark and domain registrations in secret in order to undermine Nagios and the community.  Only after we shamed them by publicly disclosing the details, did Netways finally return the trademarks and domains they were leveraging.  I think its safe to say that words like honesty, integrity, and ethics aren’t valued or even understood by Netways and its employees.

We understand that it can get uncomfortable for individuals when evidence is presented that shows they acted less than honorably.  We at Nagios believe that who you work with is just as important as what it is that you’re working on.  We will always chose to work with individuals with high ethical standards and a great attitude.  If you have skills, but you don’t have values, you won’t be on our team.  Period.

– Ethan Galstad, Nagios Founder and Defender

Questions for the Community

I am excited to be the new lead for the nagios-plugins project and look forward to working with the community and other plugin developers to better the project.  Even though we have started to fix some low hanging issues, we have larger plans for the project overall.  Once we finish setting up the automated build and testing servers, the team will open the project up for new plugin submissions.  I have a few questions for the community below, which you can respond to through the mailing lists (Nagiosplugin-commits, Nagiosplugin-devel, Nagiosplugin-help), forum, or directly in the comments below.

1. What distributions (if any) have had problems with building in the past and should be targeted for the automated tests?

2. Are there any plugins that you wish were included in the official nagios-plugins package? (We will be perusing the exchange for popular abandoned gpl perl/c plugins, but user input and submissions are always appreciated)

-Andy Brist