Nagios Tips: Did You Know… ?

There are a number of things within Nagios that I did not know it could do until I had used it for some time.  I thought I would pass these facts on to you.  Once you know them, it seems simple – but only afterwards.

For example, consider the Host and Service Status Totals at the top of the screen.

All text (except the title) is clickable.  If you click on “All Problems” it will show the appropriate problem entries (assuming they can be seen in the current view!).

Another example is the Service Overview: if you click on the extended title for a service group, you’ll see all details for that service group.  However, if you click on the short title for a service group, you’ll be able to take actions on the entire service group as a whole (very nice!).  You can schedule downtime, enable or disable notifications, and enable or disable active checks.

This capability extends to the Host Groups as well: you can (at the appropriate screen) enable downtime for a hostgroup, enable or disable notifications for a hostgroup or for all services in a hostgroup, and enable or disable active checks for all services in a hostgroup.

Don’t forget to look at the inocculous-looking info box at the top left of the main Nagios data window; this window often provides ways to look at details of the current view.  For example, when looking at the Service Details for a particular host group, you can switch to a number of other views relating to the current host group, or for all host groups.

There is also the ability to sort the Status Details report.  This allows you to answer questions like these:

• What is the most recent check completed?  (order by “Last Check”)
• What is the longest status duration? (order by “Duration”)

Any column can be sorted except “Status Information” – click on the arrows at the title.  Normally this report is sorted alphabetically by Host then by Service.

However, suppose you want only one particular service group?  Click on the Service name, then under “Member of” in the next screen click on the group name.  Thus you see the Service Overview for that service group.  From there you can see the Service Details (by clicking the full title) or Actions (by clicking on the short title).

With all of these ways to view problems, you can answer your questions quicker and view the results faster.

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