Nagios is a network and system monitoring tool,it notifies the administrator whenever the system goes wrong and whenever the system go better for the specified hosts and systems.
The important features of Nagios Server can be listed as below :
Monitoring various network services like pop,smtp,httpd and many more.
Monitoring the resources of the host system like processor load,memory usage and so on.
Users can design their own plugin to check specific services.
Parallel checking available for various systems
And there are lot many features of nagios and is worth configuring.
Installing The Nagios Server
Before Beginning The Installation :
It Takes time and patience to install and configure nagios before it really starts monitoring anything.So don't work in hurry,relax and take your time and proceed exactly as described here unless you are an expert.
- Login As Root To the server There are a lot of superuser jobs to be done in order to install linux , so first of all you need to login as a root to the server,you will need to create various users and groups.
- Download The package Download the installation package from the links above.
Unpack the Compressed Package
tar -vxzf nagios-version.tar.gz - After unpacking the distribution then you will have core nagios distribution files inside the directory /downloads/nagios
Create Nagios User/Group - You're probably going to want to run Nagios under a normal user account, so add a new user (and group) to your system with the following command (this will vary depending on what OS you're running):
adduser nagios - Create Installation Directory
- Create the base directory where you would like to install Nagios as follows...
mkdir /usr/local/nagios - Change the owner of the base installtion directory to be the Nagios user and group you added earlier as follows:
chown nagios.nagios /usr/local/nagios - Identify Web Server User
- You're probably going to want to issue external commands (like acknowledgements and scheduled downtime) from the web interface. To do so, you need to identify the user your web server runs as (typically apache, although this may differ on your system). This setting is found in your web server configuration file. The following command can be used to quickly determine what user Apache is running as (paths may differ on your system):
grep "^User" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf - Add Command File Group: Next we're going to create a new group whose members include the user your web server is running as and the user Nagios is running as. Let's say we call this new group 'nagcmd' (you can name it differently if you wish). On RedHat Linux you can use the following command to add a new group (other systems may differ):
/usr/sbin/groupadd nagcmd - Next, add the users that your web server and Nagios run as to the newly created group with the following commands (I'll assume apache and nagios are the respective users):
/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd apache/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd nagios - Run the Configure Script
Run the configure script to initialize variables and create a Makefile as follows...(the last two options: --with-command-xxx are optional, but needed if you want to issue external commands)
./configure --prefix=prefix --with-cgiurl=cgiurl --with-htmurl=htmurl --with-nagios-user=someuser --with-nagios-group=somegroup --with-command-group=cmdgroup - Replace prefix with the installation directory that you created in the step above (default is /usr/local/nagios)
- Replace cgiurl with the actual url you will be using to access the CGIs (default is /nagios/cgi-bin). Do NOT append a slash at the end of the url. Replace htmurl with the actual url you will be using to access the HTML for the main interface and documentation (default is /nagios/) Replace someuser with the name of a user on your system that will be used for setting permissions on the installed files (default is nagios)
- Replace somegroup with the name of a group on your system that will be used for setting permissions on the installed files (default is nagios) Replace cmdgroup with the name of the group running the web server (default is nagios, in the example above it was nagcmd). This will allow group members (i.e. your web server) to be able to submit external commands to Nagios.
- Compile Binaries Compile Nagios and the CGIs with the following command:
make all
Installing The Binaries And HTML Files
Install the binaries and HTML files (documentation and main web page) with the following command:
make install - Installing An Init Script
If you wish, you can also install the sample init script to /etc/rc.d/init.d/nagios with the following command:
make install-init
You may have to edit the init script to make sense with your particular OS and Nagios installation by editing paths, etc - Directory Structure And File Locations
Change to the root of your Nagios installation directory with the following command...
cd /usr/local/nagios - You should see five different subdirectories. A brief description of what each directory contains is given in the table below.
Sub-Directory Contents bin/ Nagios core program etc/ Main, resource, object, and CGI configuration files should be put here sbin/ CGIs share/ HTML files (for web interface and online documentation) var/ Empty directory for the log file, status file, retention file, etc. var/archives Empty directory for the archived logs var/rw Empty directory for the external command file - Installing The Plugins
In order for Nagios to be of any use to you, you're going to have to download and install some plugins. Plugins are usually installed in the libexec/ directory of your Nagios installation (i.e. /usr/local/nagios/libexec). Plugins are scripts or binaries which perform all the service and host checks that constitute monitoring. You can grab the latest release of the plugins from the Nagios downloads page or directly from the SourceForge project page. - Setup The Web Interface
You're probably going to want to use the web interface, so you'll also have to read the instructions on setting up the web interface and configuring web authentication, etc. next. - Configuring Nagios
So now you have things compiled and installed, but you still haven't configured Nagios or defined objects (hosts, services, etc.) that should be monitored. Information on configuring Nagios and defining objects can be found here. There's a lot to configure, but don't let it discourage you - its well worth it.
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