nagios

Perform common tasks in Nagios related to downtime and notifications.

The Nagios module has two basic functions: scheduling downtime and toggling alerts for services or hosts.

The following parameters are common to all actions in the nagios module:

parameter	required	default	comments
action	yes		one of: 'downtime', 'enable_alerts'/'disable_alerts', or 'silence'/'unsilence'
host	yes		host to operate on in nagios
cmdfile	no	/var/spool/nagios/cmd/nagios.cmd	path to the nagios command file (FIFO pipe)

The following parameters may be used with the downtime action:

parameter	required	default	comments
author	no	Ansible	author to leave downtime comments as
minutes	no	30	minutes to schedule downtime for
services	no		what to manage downtime/alerts for. separate multiple services with commas. service is an alias for services

The following parameter must be used with the enable_alerts and disable_alerts actions:

parameter	required	default	comments
services	no		what to manage downtime/alerts for. separate multiple services with commas. service is an alias for services

Note

The silence and unsilence actions have no additional parameters that may be used with them.

All actions require the host parameter to be given explicitly. In playbooks you can use the $inventory_hostname variable to refer to the host the playbook is currently running on.

You can specify multiple services at once by separating them with commas, .e.g., services=httpd,nfs,puppet.

When specifying what service to handle there is a special keyword, host, which will handle alerts/downtime for the host itself, e.g., service=host. This keyword may not be given with other services at the same time. Handling alerts/downtime for a host does not affect alerts/downtime for any of the services running on it.

Examples of Scheduling Downtime in playbooks:

---
- hosts: webservers
  user: root
  tasks:
    - name: set 30 minutes of apache downtime
      action: nagios action=downtime minutes=15 service=httpd host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

    - name: schedule an hour of HOST downtime
      action: nagios action=downtime minutes=60 service=host host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

    # Use the default of 30 minutes
    # Schedule downtime for three services at once
    - name: schedule downtime for a few services
      action: nagios action=downtime services=frob,foobar,qeuz host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

And from the command line:

$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=downtime minutes=15 service=httpd host=server01.example.com"
$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=downtime minutes=60 service=host host=server01.example.com"
$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=downtime services=frob,foobar,qeuz host=server01.example.com"

Examples of handling specific host/service alerts in playbooks:

---
- hosts: webservers
  user: root
  tasks:
    - name: enable SMART disk alerts
      action: nagios action=enable_alerts service=smart host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

    # Note that you can disable multiple at once
    - name: disable httpd alerts
      action: nagios action=disable_alerts service=httpd,nfs host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

    # And disabling HOST alerts
    - name: disable HOST alerts
      action: nagios action=disable_alerts service=host host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

And from the command line:

$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=enable_alerts service=smart host=server01.example.com"
$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=disable_alerts service=httpd,nfs host=server01.example.com"
$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=disable_alerts service=host host=server01.example.com"

Examples of Silencing all host/service alerts in playbooks:

---
- hosts: webservers
  user: root
  tasks:
    - name: silence ALL alerts
      action: nagios action=silence host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

    - name: unsilence all alerts
      action: nagios action=unsilence host=$inventory_hostname
      delegate_to: nagios.example.com

And from the command line:

$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=silence host=server01.example.com"
$ ansible nagios.example.com -m nagios -a "action=unsilence host=server01.example.com"

Optional Configuration

If your nagios cmdfile is not /var/spool/nagios/cmd/nagios.cmd you can configure ansible (on your nagios server) to use the correct one by making a file called /etc/ansible/modules/nagios.conf that looks like this:

[main]
cmdfile = /path/to/your/nagios.cmd

Or, use the cmdfile parameter to set it explicitly.

Troubleshooting Tips

The nagios module may not operate for you out of the box. The most likely problem is with your cmdfile permissions/paths. You will receive this error if that is the case:

{"msg": "unable to write to nagios command file", "failed": true, "cmdfile": "/var/spool/nagios/cmd/nagios.cmd"}

Steps to correct this:

Ensure you are running the nagios module as a user who has write permissions to the cmdfile.
Ensure you have cmdfile set correctly.

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nagios

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