[Nagiosplug-devel] RFC: new style command arguments for thresholds

[Ton Voon]

Hi all,

Thanks for the feedback so far. Original post here: http:// 
thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.nagios.plugins.devel/4461/focus=4461

Summary:

Matthias Eble suggests problems with perfdata and current performance  
graphing tools. Need more feedback from the graphing teams!

Matthias also says output length of XML maybe a problem for < Nagios  
3 systems. Good point.

Matthias points out lots of current work on SF trackers. Yes, current  
tracker items is a big problem which I'm trying to address that. Any  
help always appreciated.

Gavin Carr and Andreas Ericsson say that thresholds definitions could  
be "contextual" based on what is best for the plugin, eg, check_procs  
--processes=^1:1 to mean alert outside is . I think consistency is  
better - any more thoughts?

Gavin and Andreas suggest that metric names are defined on command  
line with "-", but mapped to "_" in perf data output. I'm fine with  
that unless anyone objects.

Gavin agrees with structured data, but suggests yaml or JSON. My  
feeling is that yaml is more for readable text files and doesn't work  
on single line output. JSON uses lots of symbols to convey its data,  
which I'm not sure would either be readable or easily parsed. I think  
the options are really XML or the current perf data style.

Andreas disagrees with XML because of shell problems with "<" and  
">". I guess this is for Nagios 1.x systems where perf data had to be  
sent via command lines. Since Nagios 2+ uses environment variables,  
this should be less of an issue.

Andreas disagrees with the choice of "/" as the separator in -- 
metric=crit/warn and suggests comma instead. I want to avoid a comma  
because, in future, I can see ranges will be defined with comma to  
mean other ranges, such as current page ranges: 1-6,9. Also, I'd like  
to keep the crit and warn definition in the same syntax argument,  
rather than separating out to --metric-crit and --metric-warn. I'm  
all for a different delimiter if it makes sense and doesn't clash. I  
avoided semi-colon because of the shell meaning.

Andreas suggests warn comes before crit. I favoured crit first  
because it is more important than warn, but I'm not fixed to this.  
Any other thoughts?

Andreas suggests sticking plugin name and version in the current perf  
data format as reserved words. Good idea.


There's no major disagreements about a more consistent syntax  
required for thresholds, so that sounds like an "okay".

I'm starting to think that, with the Nagios/NRPE output limitations,  
that XML is too much right now and that we need to stick to the  
current output style. However, I think the warn and crit sections of  
the current perf data output is inconsistent to the point of being  
useless right now, but I would need some people from the graphing  
teams to tell me what they think. I'll drop the emails to various lists.

Ton

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