Nagios Pi: Add more hosts

For this configuration of RaspberryPi I'm going to use a single file to hold information for all of the monitored hosts.  On a larger network you would find advantages to using a more complex structure for the couple dozen hosts we'll expect a RaspberryPi to monitor this will work well.

 

Start by creating  a new .cfg file in the /etc/nagios3/conf.d directory:

sudo nano hosts.cfg

 By the way, I'm also going to use the Nano text editor for simplicity sake and will not apologize for it.

The structure of the file is as follows:

define host {
use     generic-host	Required Use generic-host as a template, this defines the most basic services.
host-name     host name	Required Supply the name of the host.  This is what the host will appear as in the Nagios UI.  If you supply the host-name but not an address, then Nagios will try to resolve this name against DNS.
alias     description	Optional You can provide more description about the host here.
address    xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx	Optional Defines the IP address this host is at.  Obviously, use only for devices that have fixed IP addresses.
}

A host with dynamic addressing would look like this:

define host {

        use      generic-host
        host_name       DIRECTV-H23-91652B1A
}

A host with fixed addressing would look like this:

define host {

        use     generic-host
        host_name       Main Floor AP
        address 192.168.2.15
        alias   Main Floor AP
}

Write out the file from Nano (control + O then control + x)

Check the Nagios config (or if you feel lucky....don't):

sudo nagios3 -v /etc/nagios3/nagios.cfg

Restart Nagios:

sudo service nagios3 restart

Go to the Nagios UI and check your hosts.