setting up passive checks on nagios - nagios

Question

hello board this question may be a little clean and green however,
I've been trying to set up Nagios NSCA for passive checks on a local ubuntu box as a prototype.
for those in the know, my nsca listening on 5667 and send_nsca is on the same ubuntu computer (localhost 127.0.0.1) . I've been reading and testing object definitions and service templates however I have been getting config errors when i try to access nagios web after modifications.
I hope to get clearer instructions on how I can create the service (directories/configurations) to process passive checks in Nagio3 for ubuntu.

Answer 1

There are a few things to consider, firstly that localhost is defined as a host and secondly that the check actually exists as it would for any other check but with a command that doesn't actually do anything, for example.. I've created a passiveservices.cfg file with services defined as follows:
define service{
use generic-service,service-pnp
host_name Server1,Server2
service_description Uptime
active_checks_enabled 1
passive_checks_enabled 1
check_command check_null
check_freshness 1
check_period none
}
define service{
use generic-service,service-pnp
host_name Server1,Server2
service_description Drive space
active_checks_enabled 1
passive_checks_enabled 1
check_command check_null
check_freshness 1
check_period none
Note that the check command is check_null, it's not actually doing anything.. and passive_checks_enabled is 1.
There are two lines within Nagios.cfg which you need to enable:
accept_passive_host_checks
accept_passive_service_checks
It's also a good idea to enable the following two lines aswell
check_service_freshness
check_host_freshness
If a server doesn't poll in after a set amount of time, it'll trigger a script (I trigger an email within my config)
Lastly, enable the following two lines:
log_external_commands
log_passive_checks
They'll help with debugging if this doesn't work. It writes out to /var/log/syslog on Ubuntu (well, it does on mine)..