Ton will look back over the last year to see what has been achieved in the Nagios Plugins project and discuss some of the changes planned for the future.

1. Major plugin changes
check_ntp: Will be deprecated,
replaced with check_ntp_peer and
check_ntp_time
pst3 for Solaris
check_procs with --ereg-argument
check_dns enhancements to expect
multiple values
check_icmp to specify source address

2. Extra options
Ini file defines extra command line
parameters
Demo
./configure --enable-extra-opts
Documented: http://nagiosplugins.org/
extra-opts

3. Upcoming

4. Plans
Change from subversion to git
More internationalisation
utils_cmd instead of popen
Captures stderr as well as stdout
Better library functions

5. Library functions
Need a library of the common
functions
perl: Nagios::Plugin
C: utils_base.c
More documentation
More design
Interested in anyone with experience

6. Messages
for (@message) {
if (m/Error/) {
$np->add_message( CRITICAL, $_ );
} else {
$np->add_message( OK, $_ );
}
}
($code, $message) = $np->check_message();
nagios_exit( $code, $message );

7. Multi line?
When is multi line output useful?
DISK OK - free space: / 3349 MB (34%); /
etc/svc/volatile 1792 MB (100%); /var 6871
MB (98%); /tmp 1792 MB (74%); /var/run 1792
MB (100%); /data1 44583 MB (87%);
But first line is the most useful
Means storing information “as we go”
for printing at the end

8. Multi line!
Capture stderr as well as stdout
Plugin output = stdout + stderr
Fixes the problem where plugins fail
with no output, but just write to
stderr

9. Ranges and thresholds
Summary:
Ranges not obvious. Alerts on
outside, not inside
check_procs -w 0:10
Proposed:
check_procs --number=5:/2:
Working example for customer in svn

10. Combining
community brains
http://nagiosplugins.org/rfc/
new_threshold_syntax
Old:
check_procs -C httpd
--metric VSZ -w 8096 -c 16182
New:
check_procs -C httpd
--vsize ok=0..8096,warn=8097..16182,uom=Mb

11. But … problem
Performance data
/=6500MB;8864;9356;0;9849
Though label=value[uom] is okay,
threshold data will not be valid
anymore

12. Future performance data?
Currently is an obscure notation
Changes to data - hard to extend
Gerd Muller wanted plugin version
Matthias Flacke wanted additional
data for check_multi
Needs to be machine readable, but
extensible, maybe markup language...

13. XML
XML is cheap to create, more expensive to
consume
Great tools:
Parsing – LibXML, SAX
Validate – RelaxNG
Could be multi line, but Nagios 3
supports this
Maybe a --capabilities to give an XML
output of the plugin abilities

14. XML perf example
<perf>
<data>time=0.53s</data>
<ok>0..1</ok>
<warn>1..3</warn>
<crit>3..5</crit>
</perf>

15. XML --capabilities
example
<plugin>
<name>check_icmp</name>
<version>1.3</version>
<performance>
<metric>
<label>rta</label><range>0:</range>
<description>Round trip average</description>
<rrd><dst>GAUGE</dst><cf>AVERAGE</cf></rrd>
</metric>
<metric>
<label>pl</label><range>0:100</range>
<description>Percent loss</description>
<rrd><dst>GAUGE</dst><cf>MAX</cf></rrd>
</metric>
</performance>
</plugin>

16. Mission
Create great Plugins for Nagios

17. One more thing...
CSI fan
Think I’m Gil Grissom
Deputy: Holger Weiss

18. Thanks
To the team
To contributors
To users - all feedback is good
To Netways

19. Questions?