OpenSource NetMonitoring » Nagios

Two cool Nagios applications on Apple iPhone

admin — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:58:12 +0000

If you have your Nagios monitoring server published on the public Internet and have administrators working from home or have engineers oncall for troubleshooting then you can better off with the following iPhone applications to keep you upto date on whats going on with your network (I’m assuming you are all those rich administrators with iPhones hanging in your pockets).

These two are great convenience applications making it simple to stay on top of your network status. Before we look into the applications, it is important that we look at some security considerations. If you are publishing your Nagios Monitoring server on the Public Internet, it is important to realise the fact, Nagios can be a treasure for information for any hacker on the internet so make sure that the access is not on simple HTTP and is on SSL (HTTPS). Move your Nagios server onto the DMZ in your network and open only the required ports (HTTPS only)

iNag

Courtesy John's iApps Site

iNag is a iPhone application that allows you to view your Nagios monitored network from anywhere, acknowledge host and services problems right from your phone, view Daily event logs all using a fast and secure method that does not require you to open your Nagios installation to the world.

iNags unique conduit approach makes it very fast on Edge/3G or WiFi connections, iNag can download a typical 300+ service network in less than 10 seconds. iNag comes with an open source php script that can be put on any web server and supports SSL and web based authentication, the iNag conduit script “inag.php” also has a built in authentication mechanism for added security.

Features include

Tactical overview showing the current state of your network
Host view and Service View listing Hosts/Services grouped by hosts
Host Details and Service Details to look into details of each Host/Service
Acknowledge Host/Service problems right from you iPhone/iPod touch
Log View to view the current days event log, filtering by hour, and event types

Click here to visit the project home.

Brooklyn for Nagios

courtesy feinsmithsoftware.com

This is a simple iPhone application for Nagios that connects directly to the Nagios URL on the public Internet domain with a username and password. You don’t need a browser to connect to Nagios.

Brooklyn can display list of Hosts Summary and services as well as detailed view of individual Hosts and Services.

Click here to visit the project home

Nagios Checker – Nagios Alarms on your Firefox Status bar

admin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:50:31 +0000

Just came across this great Firefox Browser addon, Nagios Checker 0.11 for Nagios Network Monitoring system alerts. This is a great simple addon that shows any alarms on your nagios monitoring system simply on the browser status bar providing the need not to logon to Nagios web interface. The extension loads up in the status bar and alarms you of any network events. What I liked in the extension is that it is absolutely non-intrusive. Sits on the bottom right corner of the browser status bar and highlights any alarm. When you move your mouse over it, it displays the alarm in detail.

Once installed, restart the browser. This should load the extension on the status bar. Right-click and select Settings. As a first step, Add a new Nagios Monitoring Server and its access username and password. This allows the extension to obtain status update from Nagios.

Nagios Checker 0.11 can work on Firefox 1.x & 2.x version of the browser and can support nagios 1.x & Nagios 2.x

It provides a quite a lot of features including

Filtering the output on the Extension window

Output Display Properties

Sound Alerts when an alarm appears

Extension behaviour control and status.cgi update interval

For more information and installation, please click here

Install and Configure Nagios 2.x on Debian 4.0 with Apache

admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:43:46 +0000

Nagios® is an Open Source enterprise grade host, service and network monitoring program. Nagios is a host and service monitor designed to alert network problems. Nagios is designed to run under linux 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.

Installation of Nagios is rather a bit lenghtly but very easy and straight forward. I thought it would be better if we approach the installation one module at a time and hence have divided into 4 different posts as follows:

1. Install and configure the pre-requisites

2. Install Nagios Binaries & CGI

3. Install Nagios Plugins

4. Setup web interface and CGI Authentication

The installation platform for Nagios is as follows:

Operating System: Debian Linux 4.0r2 (minimal install using Business CD version)

Webserver: Apache 2.2.3

PHP: PHP version 5.2.0

Nagios Version: Nagios 2.11

Nagios Plugin version: Nagios Plugin 1.4.11

When you are through with the four steps, you are ready to add your hosts services and start monitoring them.

Happy Open source Nagios Monitoring!!!

Configure Nagios web interface CGI and User Authentication

admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:18:37 +0000

If you have jumped into this post directly then it is worth having a look at first three parts of this installation procedure from the following links

1. Install and configure the pre-requisites

2. Install Nagios Binaries & CGI

3. Install Nagios Plugins

The final part of this four part installation procedure for Nagios installation covers the setup of webinterface for nagios, setup CGI authentication and user authentication using htpasswd for nagios website.

Create a new website on Apache

debian4r2# vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/Nagios

Add the following

ScriptAlias /nagios/cgi-bin /usr/local/nagios/sbin

    Options ExecCGI

    AllowOverride None

    Order allow,deny

    Allow from all

    AuthName "Nagios Access"

    AuthType Basic

    AuthUserFile /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users

    Require valid-user

Alias /nagios /usr/local/nagios/share

    Options None

    AllowOverride None

    Order allow,deny

    Allow from all

    AuthName "Nagios Access"

    AuthType Basic

    AuthUserFile /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users

    Require valid-user

Enable the site on Apache

debian4r2:/etc/apache2/sites-available# a2ensite Nagios

Reload the config file for Apache to make the nagios site active

debian4r2:/etc/apache2/sites-available# /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Reloading web server config…3638

Create and add the first Nagios user for the web interface

htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

NOTE: The "-c" in the above command creates the htpasswd.users file and add nagiosadmin as a user.

Any new user should be added with the above command without the "-c"

Add more users

htpasswd /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagios

Set the CGI Authentication in the Nagios CGI.cfg file

debian4r2# vi /usr/local/nagios/etc/cgi.cfg

Set the following value

use_authentication=1

Thats done and we are ready to go.

Access your Nagios website

http:///nagios/

Enter the username and password and off you go. From here on, you need to add contacts, contact groups, hosts,hostgroups,services…to get going with monitoring your network, hosts, services.

Install Nagios Plugins 1.4.11 for Nagios 2.x

admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:50:21 +0000

Part 3 of the four part installation procedure for Nagios involves the installation of Nagios Plugins with the pre-requisites and the actual Nagios Binaries already installed.

If you have jumped directly into this article, then it is worth to check the following:

Part 1 Install and Configure Pre-requisites for Nagios

Part 2 Install Nagios 2.10 in Debian4.0 r2 with Apache2

Nagios Plugin Version: 1.4.11 (at the time of writing this article)

Let us download and install Nagios Plugins.

Download Nagios Plugins

Download the latest stable version on Nagios Plugins from

http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz

Use wget to download directly to your debian linux system

debian4r2:/software# wget http://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz

Unzip and Untar the downloaded file

debian4r2:/software# tar -zxvf nagios-plugins-1.4.11.tar.gz

Change directory to the newly created nagios plugin directory

debian4r2:/software#cd Nagios-plugins-1.4.11

Run the configure script

debian4r2:/software/nagios-plugins-1.4.11# ./configure

Run the Make commands to compile and install the default plugins

debian4r2:/software/nagios-plugins-1.4.11# make && make install

That installs the Nagios plugins. That completes all the installations and the final part will be to configure the web interface, CGIs and password authetication for the Nagios website. Proceed to the final step to configure the webinterface CGIs and Authentication.

Step 4. Setup web interface and CGI Authentication

Install Nagios 2.10 in Debian4.0 r2 with Apache2

admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:21:45 +0000

Part 2 of the four part installation procedure for Nagios involves the actual install of the Nagios Binaries itself. Here we cover the download, and installation of the latest stable version of Nagios.

If you jumped directly into this article, its worth having a look into the installation and configurations of the Nagios pre-requisites at the link below

1. Install and configure the pre-requisites

Nagios Version: Nagios 2.10 (at the time of writing this article)

Download Nagios

The latest stable version of Nagios can be downloaded from

http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-2.10.tar.gz

Use wget to download

debian4r2:/software# wget http://dfn.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/nagios/nagios-2.10.tar.gz

Untar and Unzip the downloaded file

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# tar -zxvf nagios-2.10.tar.gz

Change Directory to the extracted nagios directory

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# cd nagios-2.10

Run the configure script

# ./configure –with-nagios-user=nagios –with-nagios-group=nagios –with-command-group=nagcmd

This assumes default Nagios Root,CGI, HTML/Website locations.

If you would like to change any of these location then the following is the syntax

# ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/nagios –with-cgiurl=/nagios/cgi-bin –with-htmurl=/nagios/ –with-nagios-user=nagios –with-nagios-group=nagios –with-command-group=nagios

where
–prefix=/usr/local/nagios is the Nagios root folder  

–with-cgiurl=/nagios/cgi-bin is the Nagios CGI folder  

–with-htmurl=/nagios/ is the Nagios HTML/Website folder  

–with-nagios-user=nagios is the Nagios user  

–with-nagios-group=nagios is the Nagios group  

–with-command-group=nagios is the Nagios command group which has webserver user (Apache) and the nagios user as members.

If all went OK You should see something like the following:

General Options:  

 -------------------------  

        Nagios executable:  nagios  

        Nagios user/group:  nagios,nagios  

       Command user/group:  nagios,nagcmd  

            Embedded Perl:  no  

             Event Broker:  yes  

        Install ${prefix}:  /usr/local/nagios  

                Lock file:  ${prefix}/var/nagios.lock  

           Init directory:  /etc/init.d  

  Apache conf.d directory:  /etc/apache2/conf.d  

                  Host OS:  linux-gnu

 Web Interface Options:  

 ------------------------  

                 HTML URL:  http://localhost/nagios/  

                  CGI URL:  http://localhost/nagios/cgi-bin/  

 Traceroute (used by WAP):  /usr/sbin/traceroute

Review the options above for accuracy.  If they look okay,  

type 'make all' to compile the main program and CGIs.

Now,

Compile Nagios and the CGIs

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# make all

Install the Nagios Binaries and HTML Files

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# make install

Install the init-script to start Nagios at System startup

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# make install-init

Install and configure permissions for the Commands directory for External Commands

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# make install-commandmode

If you want the sample configs installed then run

debian4r2:/software/nagios-2.10# make install-config

Now that the binaries are installed. The next step would be to install the Nagios default plugins. This will get you started with a set of common checks that can be used to check hosts. Follow the rest of the steps to complete the nagios installation.

Step3. Install Nagios Plugins

Step4. Setup web interface and CGI Authentication

Install and Configure Pre-requisites for Nagios

admin — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:21:41 +0000

As part 1 of the four part installation procedure of Nagios Open Source Monotioring Solution, this covers the basics and installation and configuration of pre-requisites for Nagios before proceeding to the actual installation of Nagios binaries.

The Pre-requisites that needs to be installed and configured for Nagios are

GNU compiler Collection (debian gcc package)

Make package to install the binaries (make)

Apache Webserver (apache2)

PHP 5 (php5)

php5-gd php5-cgi modules

Nagios Users

Setup Nagios Root Directory

So, lets get started.

Install GNU Compiler Collection

debian4r2:~# aptitude install gcc

Install Make package

debian4r2:~# aptitude install make

Install Apache 2 Webserver

debian4r2:~# aptitude install apache2

Install PHP 5

debian4r2:~# aptitude install php5

Install PHP5 module php5-gd & php5-cgi

debian4r2:~# aptitude install php5-gd

debian4r2:~# aptitude install php5-cgi

Now, lets create users and groups for nagios

Create user nagios

debian4r2:~# useradd nagios

This creates user “nagios” and the group “nagios”

Create group nagioscmd for command file (external commands)

debian4r2:~# groupadd nagcmd

Add user “nagios” and “www-data” (the user that runs the apache webserver) to this group

debian4r2:~# usermod -G nagcmd nagios

debian4r2:~# usermod -G nagcmd www-data

Create the Nagios root directory

debian4r2:~# mkdir /user/local/nagios

Chown the ownership of the group to the nagios user and group

debian4r2:~# chown nagios:nagios /user/local/nagios

Thats it done, Nagios is now ready to be installed on the server. Follow the next steps to complete the installation.

Step2. Install Nagios Binaries & CGI

Step3. Install Nagios Plugins

Setp4. Setup web interface and CGI Authentication

Error – Perl execution failed in Nagmin module installation

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:10:57 +0000

If you install Nagmin module (2.1) for Webmin with MySQL 4.0 or later, you may end up with the error

Error – Perl execution failed

Can’t use an undefined value as a HASH reference at /usr/lib/perl5/DBD/mysql.pm line 115

This can be fixed by one of the two following ways:

1. Upgrade to Nagmin 2.2 module to fix the problem

To upgrade, first make a backup of the /usr/local/nagmin directory:

# mv /usr/local/nagmin /usr/local/nagmin_bkp

Now, download Nagmin-2.2.0 from

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/nagmin/nagmin-2.2.0.tar.gz?modtime=1083196800&big_mirror=0

untar the nagmin-2.2.0.tar.gz

# tar -zxvf nagmin-2.2.0.tar.gz

Move the directory nagmin-2.2.0 and to /usr/local/nagmin directory

# mv nagmin-2.2.0 /usr/local/ nagmin

Launch the webmin to add the nagmin as a webmin module.

Launch http:// or HOSTNAME>:10000 to launch webmin

Click Webmin Configuration.

Click Webmin modules.

Select “from local file” option and and type the location as

/usr/local/nagmin/nagmin-2.2.0.wbm

and click Install.

This should install the updated Nagmin module (2.2.0) and allow a link to launch Nagmin. Alternatively, click Servers then select “Nagmin Nagios Monitoring”

2. Edit the file /usr/lib/perl5/DBD/mysql.pm

and add the line

$attrhash ||= {};

just in a new line next to the following:

# Avoid warnings for undefined values

$username ||= ”;

$password ||= ”;

<— Add here

So it looks like,

# Avoid warnings for undefined values

$username ||= ”;

$password ||= ”;

$attrhash ||= {};

This should fix the problem.

For more information, check the following MySQL BUG 17323 for more information:

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=17323

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How to install Nagios 2.x in Linux (Debian & Redhat)

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:58:12 +0000

The procedures listed here will help you successfully install Nagios 2.x on a Linux platform. The procedure listed here is been tested on Debian 3.1 (Sarge) and Redhat Enterprise Linux.

Operating System : Debian 3.1 (Sarge) and Redhat Enterprise Linux.
Webserver : Apache 2
Nagios : 2.3.1 (Stable)

Lets start with downloading Nagios. Nagios can be downloaded from

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=26589

Pre-Setup:

Create a User Account that Nagios runs as (Default: Nagios)

# useradd nagios

This should create the user account and a default group with the same name (nagios). This can be checked by

# grep nagios /etc/passwd

This should show the group (if created) with the members.

If the group is missing then create the group by,

# groupadd nagios

This group can be used as the group that Nagios uses as a Command group.

Add the Nagios user and the user which the webserver (Apache) runs as

In Debian, the user is www-data

In Redhat, this is apache.

You can also check this from the config file of the webser by using one th following:

Debian

# grep “^User” /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

# ps -ef | grep apache (if Apache is running)

Redhat

# grep “^User” /etc/httpd/conf.d/httpd.conf

# ps -ef | grep apache (if Apache is running)

Add webserver user (www-data/apache) and Nagios user (nagios)

# usermod -G nagios nagios
#usermod -G www-data,nagios www-data (Debian)
#usermod -G apache,nagios apache (Redhat)

Check i the users are the members of the group by

# grep nagios /etc/group

Create the Nagios root directory

The default folder is /usr/local/nagios

# mkdir /usr/local/nagios

All is done and we are ready to install

Download Nagios

# wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nagios/nagios-2.3.1.tar.gz?download

# tar -zxvf nagios -version.tar.gz (for example nagios-2.3.1.tar.gz)

This will create the Nagios-version folder (nagios-2.3.1)

Change directory to the newly created directory

# cd nagios-version (nagios-2.3.1)

Run the configure script

# ./configure –prefix=/usr/local/nagios –with-cgiurl=/nagios/cgi-bin –with-htmurl=/nagios/ –with-nagios-user=nagios –with-nagios-group=nagios –with-command-group=nagios

where

–prefix=/usr/local/nagios is the Nagios root folder
–with-cgiurl=/nagios/cgi-bin is the Nagios CGI folder
–with-htmurl=/nagios/ is the Nagios HTML/Website folder
–with-nagios-user=nagios is the Nagios user
–with-nagios-group=nagios is the Nagios group
–with-command-group=nagios is the Nagios command group which has webserver user (Apache) and the nagios user as members.

Install the base software and HTML files

# make && make install

Install the init scripts

# make install-init

Create the required directory for command file and assign appropriate permissions to it for the external commands.

# make install-commandmode

Install the sample configs.

# make install-config

This is optional but is a very good starting point to get your nagios going.

Rename the sample config files installed in the /usr/local/nagios/etc directory from .cfg-sample to .cfg format.

# mv bigger.cfg-sample bigger.cfg

Similary rename all the files in the folder.

Now, you have a completely installed nagios to work on. The next steps would be to install the plugins and start configuring Nagios.

Prior to that, it is imporant to install the GD-Utils for the Status Maps to work properly.

In Debian, the following should install the required libraries:

# apt-get install libgd2-xpm libgd2-xpm-dev libgd2 libgd2-dev libpng12-dev libjpeg62-dev libgd-tools libpng3-dev

In Redhat Linux the following will install JPG/PNG binaries:

# yum install libpng* libjpeg* libpng3*

Now, download the GD-Utils from the following website:

http://www.boutell.com/gd/http/gd-2.0.33.tar.gz

Untar the downloaded Tar file by

# tar -zxvf gd-2.0.33.tar.gz

Change to the directory and run the config script.

# cd gd-2.033

# ./configure

Now, install using

# make && make install

This should install the GD-Utils.

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Good Nagios Plugins on the web

admin — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:53:16 +0000

Nagios Plugins are available from download on the main Nagios site and the Nagios Exchange website. However, there are a lot of resource out their on the internet where some good plugins are found. I’ve just the ones I know.