[Nagiosplug-help] Usage of check_log

[Ralph.Grothe at itdz-berlin.de]

Hello,

this may all be pretty obvious and self-explanatory to long time
Nagios veterans.

But I beg your pardon, this ultra terse help screen doesn't
instruct me at all on the correct usage of this particular
plug-in.
Does it cause the plug-in authors such hardship to spare the
extra 80 chars or so for a lucid example line?


# libexec/check_log --help                                
check_log (nagios-plugins 1.4) 1.4
The nagios plugins come with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. You may
redistribute
copies of the plugins under the terms of the GNU General Public
License.
For more information about these matters, see the file named
COPYING.

Usage: check_log -F logfile -O oldlog -q query
Usage: check_log --help
Usage: check_log --version

Log file pattern detector plugin for Nagios

Send email to nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net if you have
questions
regarding use of this software. To submit patches or suggest
improvements,
send email to nagiosplug-devel at lists.sourceforge.net.
Please include version information with all correspondence (when
possible,
use output from the --version option of the plugin itself).



For instance I'm after kernel Oops and similar utters from the
kernel that are marked on my host's OS 
as vmunix in syslogd's main log, and almost always (except during
system startup) indicate a critical condition.

e.g.

# grep vmunix /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log|tail -1
Apr 29 09:44:20 terra vmunix: vxfs: mesg 001: vx_nospace -
/dev/vg03/lvol1 file system full (1 block extent)



Now I would want check_nrpe to run something like

$libexec_dir/check_log -F /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log -q /vmunix/


But according to the above usage synopsis this was wrong syntax
because the -O option was lacking.
But then I wouldn't know what -O was good for.
Intuitively I would assosiate it with some intended output file.
But the "oldlog" would be a bit of a misnomer.
Or does it relate to also parsing some older, probably already
rotated logfile.

You see, this is all highly speculative and leaves ample space
for wild guesses.

Regards
Ralph








--
Ralph Grothe (GBII1Gr)
IT Dienstleistungszentrum Berlin 
Berliner Strasse 112-115
D-10713 Berlin
Phone:   +49 30 9012 6481
Fax:     +49 30 9012 3151