LincolnBlogs

Even though I wrote and use OSM I also use Nagios at work (along with OSM). Actually, I administer Nagios there, however I have never actually installed and configured it. It was in place before I started there.

That being said, my manager asked me how to get it installed and running today, as he wants to try using it at home. This sort of spurred me into setting it up at home tonight. It’s really nice having a server that can handle a few test VMs, by the way 🙂

I decided I would install it on CentOS, because I need to be able to get it running on RedHat for work, so off to Google I went. After a bit of searching I finally came across a WONDERFUL site which provides a quick and dirty script for getting Nagios installed and working lickety split. It works perfectly and the only adjustment I made to the script, other than changing the passwords in it, was to comment out the SELinux lines because I already have SELinux disabled.

That really was it. Pretty simple. Of course the rip here is actually getting Nagios to monitor your systems, and that is probably beyond the scope of this post, which was really meant as a reference for that install script. Configuring nagios by the command line is not for the faint of heart. The files you need to pay attention to end up in /usr/local/nagios/etc and /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects. Just keep in mind that the configs seem to reference eachother in a cyclical way and you really need to pay attention. I found a good starter-help at the bottom of this website for adding your first non-local machine. Once you get that working you’ll understand how to add more, but I still found it a bit of a frustrating experience for a few minutes.

I did note, however, that there are quite a few projects out there which claim to configure Nagios for you via a web interface. I hope to give them a shot or two in the coming days/nights. Let me know if any of you have tried any and how they fair.