Sally Reich's presentation on From Newb to Nagios in 90 Days. The presentation was given during the Nagios World Conference North America held Oct 13th - Oct 16th, 2014 in Saint Paul, MN. For more information on the conference (including photos and videos), visit: http://go.nagios.com/conference

1. Newb to Nagios
(Now What Shall I Do With It???)
Sally Reich
Beekeeper
And
Doer of Other Stuff
sally@frommyhive.com

2. Introduction & Agenda
• Who am I?
• A former IT professional
• Left the IT world (not really my thing) to work more
with bees and other things, go back to school
• I am not a programmer or sys admin or “Unix
geek”
• What is this all about?
• How to go from nothing to Nagios
• How can I apply this to a beehive?
• Why did you do this?
• Funny you should ask…

3. Why Learn Nagios ?
Just one of those things
• Came with Eric Loyd, my SO, to #NagiosCon12
• He was presenting that year
• Presenting tomorrow @10:30: Nagios on AWS–Live Install & More!
• Met Ethan at reception, said
• ‘Don’t know Nagios, just here to hang-out while Eric is at
conference.’
• ‘Everyone here is so excited about it; maybe I should learn?’
• Later, met Nagios enthusiasts who asked ‘why are you here?’ and
talk came up on monitoring a beehive
• Did not make it to #NagiosCon13
• Here I am at #NagiosCon14 with thoughts on:
• A newb installing Nagios
• How a beekeeper might use Nagios

4. Learning Nagios
• Eric became my sys admin
• Got a CentOS VM from him
• Started with Instant Nagios Starter
by Michael Guthrie
• Read it as complete newbie knowing
nothing
• 384 highlights and notes
• Notes show what could be added for a total
newb

5. Highlights & Notes Sample

6. Core
• Followed Guthrie’s book
• Somewhat out of date for versions, locations,
etc.
• SA had to help in spots
• Went to Nagios Core Quickstart from
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/quickstart.html
• Followed Fedora Quickstart
• Had its own ‘learning opportunities’ for a newb
(level of expertise, assumptions about prior
software, etc.)

7. Core
• Followed “Monitoring Publicly Available
Services” Quickstart from
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/monitoring-publicservices.html
• vi editor hard to use
• Installed pico instead to edit config files
• Added a host and HTTP service on that
host – YAY!

8. YAY! My first host and service check!

9. Easier Way???
• What about XI?

10. Nagios XI to the Rescue
• ./fullinstall and it was installed!
• Logged into web interface
• Used configuration wizard
• Added host
• Added http service (and others)
• Bam! And I’m monitoring here!!!

11. Nagios XI to the Rescue
• Added notifications
• Uh-oh – I wasn’t emailed notifications??
• Oh, default is NOT to notify
• Weird – wouldn’t default be to have
notifications enabled?

12. Some tips for a newb without
a Unix background
- wget often not installed in a base operating system  yum install wget
- vi editor kinda hard, use pico  yum install pico
- Use a virtual machine if possible and take snapshots after completing major milestones 
can go back to a previous snapshot if something gets messed up or you want to retry
something
- ‘Getting started’ documentation contains info (download locations, version numbers, etc.)
current at time of writing  always start with latest info from Nagios.com
- Nagios Core comes default with a file called /usr/local/nagios/etc/localhost.cfg that can be
used for all additions to the base configuration (for monitoring your hosts and
services). Unless you want to, there is no need to add additional configuration files to the
main configuration file
- Tired of configuring separate commands, services, hosts, contacts, and escalations for
Nagios Core? It's time....INSTALL NAGIOS XI!!! one command installs it and free to use to
monitor up to seven hosts, AWESOME for the small shop or hobbyist looking to learn it
- In XI, default notifications are DISABLED for the nagiosadmin  go to “Configure,” “My
Account Settings,” “Notification Preferences,” to enable
-No "check web server port" XI wizard  use “TCP/UDP Port Monitoring Wizard" and select
"HTTP" as service to monitor
- Have a friend who can act as your SA? Use him/her!
-If you get stuck, ask someone for help! http://support.nagios.com/forum

13. So Now What?
• So now I have an XI box AND I can
monitor up to seven hosts for free!!!
• Ch. 1, 2nd paragraph of says “…you
can use it to monitor virtually anything.”
So…
• How can I use Nagios to monitor a beehive?
• A thought experiment…

14. Most hobbyist beekeepers
keep bees for the honey

15. Collecting Nectar
David Cappaert, Michigan State University, Bugwood.org

16. Collecting Nectar
Suzanne DeJohn, http://www.gardeners.com/backyard-beekeeping/8529,default,pg.html

17. Storing Nectar
http://gardenplotter.com/rospo/blog/2007/06/bees-setting-up-house.html

18. Stored Nectar in honeycomb
http://v-fork-to-fork.blogspot.com/

19. Capped Nectar = HONEY!!!

20. Capped Nectar = HONEY!!!
Obvious thing to monitor: weight of the hive –
how much honey is being stored?

21. No Swarms!

22. What Else?
• Outside the hive:
• Temp, humidity, % sunlight, wind speed,
rainfall, pressure, power to fence, etc.
• Inside the hive:
• Temp in multiple locations, water in the
bottom, humidity, sound level, continuity on
the bottom, light levels, formic acid, etc.
• The hive itself:
• Tip sensors, motion sensors, etc.
• Monitor the monitoring devices/sensors

23. Specifically:
• Nagios could send an alert when:
• It’s cold for a long time – insulate hive
• It’s hot for a long time – shade hive
• There’s a hurricane/tornado/flood coming – batten down hive, run!
• “Climate” in hive is not correct (temp, humidity, etc) – try to fix it
• Continuity on bottom board is broken or motion sensor is tripped – check
for mice, skunks, raccoons
• There’s condensation on bottom board – ventilate
• There’s light in hive – top blew off or was removed, get it back on
• If sound is too high – intruders? Or too low – bees died?
• Formic acid sensor triggers – ants in hive
• Hive weight changes – time to add a honey super? Or bees left?
• Fence has no electricity – see if bear got through, fix it
• Tip sensors are triggered – ne’er-do-well tipped hive or bear got at it

24. There’s More to Possibly Monitor…
Varroa destructor
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sanmartin/5048103407/in/photostream/

25. Varroa destructor
http://www.clickonwales.org/2011/07/a-crisis-amongst-welsh-bees/
http://coronaapicultores.blogspot.com/2013/04/varroa-transmisor-de-patogenos.html

26. Threshold?

27. Hmmm….
What might a -ified hive
look like?

28. NagioHive™
Arduino
Tilt
Sensors
Temp
Sensors
Light
Sensor
Humidity
Sensors
Scale
Data Pi
Pi
Sound
Sensors
Webcam
Weather
Station
Water Sensor
Mouse Sensor
Formic Acid
Sensors?
The interwebs
Happy beekeeper

29. NagioHive Live?
• It would be “sweet” to actually put together a NagioHive!
• Kickstarter for sensors, scale, Arduinos,
Raspberry Pis, peripherals, weatherproofing,
outsourcing electrical and other help, etc. ?
• Created a Pinterest board listing possible equipment

30. Thanks for Listening!
Going from Newb to Nagios was pretty easy,
especially if you have a SA to answer Qs! Still
A LOT for me to learn…
Nagios XI made things so much easier! Still A
LOT for me to learn…
Updating the quickstart guides as if a newbie
were reading them might be nice (may not be
necessary, but it would be nice)

31. Advice, Anyone?
If anyone has tips/advice for NagioHive,
please see me during the conference!

32. Check out:
Trevor McDonald - Support Tech @ Nagios Enterprises
Wednesday 11:30am – 12:20pm
“Monitoring the Physical World With
Nagios and Arduino”
There are many things in the physical world you might want to
monitor: room temperature, opened doors, motion, etc. While some
solutions exist, they are generally either standalone closed-source
systems, or they are limited in scope and extensibility. Arduino systems
allow you to build your own solution that is customized your needs
while maintaining complete control over the hardware and software,
all at a fraction of the cost of other solutions. In this talk I will show a
few examples of physical environment monitoring, reported passively
to Nagios.

33. Questions? Answers?
Want to know more about
keeping honeybees?

34. The End
Sally Reich
NAGIOS Beekeeper!!
sally@frommyhive.com