Penguin
Recent Changes

Differences between version 7 and predecessor to the previous major change of Nagios.

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Newer page: version 7 Last edited on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 1:29:08 pm by CraigBox Revert
Older page: version 1 Last edited on Monday, September 23, 2002 10:46:19 pm by MattBrown Revert
@@ -1,13 +1,13 @@
-Nagios® is a host and service monitor designed to inform you of network problems before your clients, end-users or managers do. It has been designed to run under the Linux operating system , but works fine under most *NIX variants as well. The monitoring daemon runs intermittent checks on hosts and services you specify using external "plugins" which return status information to Nagios. When problems are encountered, the daemon can send notifications out to administrative contacts in a variety of different ways (email , instant message , SMS, etc.). Current status information, historical logs, and reports can all be accessed via a web browser . 
+[ Nagios ® | http://www.nagios.org/] is a host and service monitor designed to inform you of network problems before your clients, end-users or managers do. It has been designed to run under the [ Linux] OperatingSystem , but works fine under most [Unix] variants as well. The monitoring daemon runs intermittent checks on hosts and services you specify using external "plugins" which return status information to Nagios. When problems are encountered, the daemon can send notifications out to administrative contacts in a variety of different ways ([Email] , [IM] , [ SMS] , etc.). Current status information, historical logs, and reports can all be accessed via a WebBrowser . 
  
-It used to go by the name NetSaint but has recently changed to Nagios  
+It used to go by the name ~ NetSaint.  
  
-* Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING , etc.)  
-* Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, etc.) 
+* Monitoring of network services ([ SMTP] , [ POP3] , [ HTTP] , [ NNTP] , Ping , etc.)  
+* Monitoring of host resources ([CPU] load, disk and memory usage, running processes, log files, etc.) 
 * Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own host and service checks 
 * Ability to define network host hierarchy, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable 
-* Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email , pager, or other user-defined method) 
+* Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via [Email] , pager, or other user-defined method) 
 * Optional escalation of host and service notifications to different contact groups 
 * Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution 
 * Support for implementing redundant and distributed monitoring servers 
 * External command interface that allows on-the-fly modifications to be made to the monitoring and notification behavior through the use of event handlers, the web interface, and third-party applications 
@@ -17,24 +17,39 @@
 * Web interface for viewing current network status, notification and problem history, log file, etc. 
 * Simple authorization scheme that allows you restrict what users can see and do from the web interface 
 * Generates pretty network status maps 
  
-Nagios has many features that NetSaint lacks but the most important one is that it allows you to configure it using template based configuration files, This simplifies the configuration hugely and reduces the chance of mistakes. Your config for a server goes from this  
- host[ [gatekeeper]=Gatekeeper (Main Cloverly Server);10.230.1.1;;check-host-alive;5;60;24x7;1;1;1;  
-to this 
+[ Nagios] has many features that ~ NetSaint lacks but the most important one is that it allows you to configure it using template based configuration files, This simplifies the configuration hugely and reduces the chance of mistakes. Your config for a server goes from this:''''  
+  
+ <verbatim>  
+ host[gatekeeper]=Gatekeeper (Main Cloverly Server);10.230.1.1;;check-host-alive;5;60;24x7;1;1;1;  
+ </verbatim>  
+  
+to this:''''  
+  
+ <verbatim>  
  define host{ 
  use generic-host ; Name of host template to use 
-  
  host_name gatekeeper 
  alias Gatekeeper (Main Cloverly Server) 
  address 10.230.1.1 
  max_check_attempts 3 
  notification_interval 120 
  notification_period 24x7 
  notification_options d,u,r 
  } 
+ </verbatim>  
+  
+Some downsides that I have encountered so far:  
+  
+* Very basic authentication method -- [Apache] htaccess files, does not integrate well with existing authentication systems  
+* The notifications take some setting up to ensure that you do not get flooded with [Email].  
+  
+!! Screenshot  
+  
+[http://images.freshmeat.net/screenshots/27961.png]  
+  
+Courtesy of FreshMeat. See also [the official screenshots | http://www.nagios.org/screenshot.php].  
  
+!! Cool things built on Nagios  
  
-Some downsides that I have encountered so far  
-* Very basic authentication method - apache htaccess files , does not integrate well with existing authentication systems  
-* The notifications take some setting up to ensure that you do not get flooded with email .  
-* Not yet in debian stable/testing only in unstable  
+[GroundWork Open Source|http://www.groundworkopensource.com] is a full web -controllable monitoring suite , built on top of Nagios .