System Monitoring with Nagios – Part 4 of 4

I have decided to write a four part article on the benefits of using Nagios. The first article focused on why I chose Nagios/what it offers. The second article focused on installing Nagios on Mac OS X. The third article focused on configuring Nagios. This fourth article will focus on improving the Nagios interface and further customizing it.

Customizing Nagios…the fun continues.
Run Nagios at Boot with an Init Script: There is a great article on how to create a StartUpItem for Mac OS X. Scroll all the way to the bottom and follow the instructions.

Adding Icons: If you know me, you also know I need to work with a good interface. Nagios…leaves something to be desired, but you can do some little things to make it look better, like adding icons. Icons? Yeah. I use blue Apple logos for all my Mac OS X Client machines, grey Apple logos for my Mac OS X Server machines, Cisco icons for my networking equip, HP printer icons for my printers, etc. How?

• Download/create/use icons that come with Nagios. Make sure the icons are located: /usr/local/nagios/images/logos
• Create a config file: /usr/local/nagios/etc/hostextinfo.cfg (see my working example in article 3). This config file allows you to attach an image, url, notes, etc to each host.
• Uncomment the extended service information line in the cgi.cfg file – around line 275. (xedtemplate_config_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/hostextinfo.cfg)

Changing the look of the web interface: When I first saw the “stylesheets” folder in /usr/local/nagios/share I got excited. After taking a look at the stylesheets, I became less than excited. Hundreds of “font-family”, “color”, etc styles is…well, not what I expected. Good news, a few good “find and replace” statements and you are set. I recommend doing the “find and replace” in multiple files all at once. Hopefully in version 2 of Nagios, they will go to using one stylesheet that controls everything. Please? 😉
[tags]Nagios[/tags]