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Subject: CVS commit: pkgsrc/net/nagios-base
From: Blue Rats
Date: 2015-04-03 19:06:08
Message id: 20150403170608.CC09998@cvs.netbsd.org
Log Message:
Update to nagios-4.0.8. Patches applied upstream were removed. Added two
patches. From: http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/nagioscore/4/en/whatsnew.html
Changes and New Features
Performance Improvements:
The performance improvements in Nagios Core 4 come primarily from the \
following areas:
Core Workers - Core workers are lightweight processes whose only job is \
to perform checks. Because they are smaller they spawn much more quickly than \
the the old process which forked the full Nagios Core. In addition, they \
communicate with the main Nagios Core process using in-memory techniques, \
eliminating the disk I/O latencies that could previously slow things down, \
especially in large installations.
Configuration Verification - Configuration verification has been \
improved so that each configuration item is verified only once. Previously \
configuration verification was an O(n2) operation.
Event Queue - The event queue now uses a data structure that has O(log \
n) insertion times versus the O(n) insertion time previously. This means that \
inserting events into the queue uses much less CPU than in Nagios Core 3.
Macro Resolution - Macros are now sorted on startup so macro lookup can \
use a binary search. In addition, frequently accessed macros $USERx$, $ARGx$, \
and $HOSTADDRESS$ are given special case, early lookups.
Object Definitions:
The following changes have been made to object definitions:
The host address attribute is now optional. The address attribute is set \
to the host name when it is absent. Most configurations set the host name \
attribute to the DNS host name making the address attribute redundant.
Both hosts and services now support an hourly value attribute. The \
hourly value attribute is intended to represent the value of a host or service \
to an organization and is used by the new minimum value contact attribute.
Services now support a parents attribute. A service parent performs a \
function similar to host parents and can be used in place of service \
dependencies in simple circumstances.
The failure_prediction_enabled flag has been removed from both host and \
service object definitions.
Contacts now support a minimum value attribute. The mininum value \
attribute is used with the host and service hourly value attributes to determine \
whether to notify a contact on host and service problems.
The host obess_over_host and the service obsess_over_service attributes \
can now both use the shortened attribute obsess.
Object Behavior:
Contact Inheritance - According to the documentation, contacts should \
only be inherited from host to service if the service has no other contacts \
whatsoever (and the same goes for escalations), but the way the code previously \
worked was that it handled contact_groups and contacts directives separately, \
meaning services with only 'contacts' specified were still eligible for \
inheriting 'contact_groups' from the host. This has been updated to comply with \
the documentation.
Timeperiods - There were several issues processing timeperiods when both \
exclusions and exceptions were involved. The issues have been corrected.
Configuration:
The following changes have been made to the main Nagios Core configuration, \
nagios.cfg:
Because there are many ways to obtain object information, the object \
information is no longer stored if in the object cache if the configuration \
variable object_cache_file equals '/dev/null'. Setting the variable to \
'/dev/null' will reduce the disk I/O load.
Because there are many ways to obtain status information, the status \
information is no longer stored if in the status data file if the configuration \
variable status_file equals '/dev/null'. Setting the variable to '/dev/null' \
will reduce the disk I/O load.
There is a new configuration variable, log_current_states, which \
determines whether current states will be logged in the log files when they are \
rotated. In Nagios Core 3, this was always the behavior and it is the default in \
Nagios Core 4. Disabling the logging of current states on log rotation can save \
considerable disk space for large installations.
There is a new configuration variable, check_workers, which specifies \
how many worker processes are created when Nagios Core starts. If not specified, \
the number of worker process is determine by the number of CPUs on the system.
There is a new configuration variable, query_socket, which specifies the \
location of the query handler socket. The default location is \
/usr/local/nagios/var/rw/nagios.qh.
The configuration variables, check_result_reaper_frequency and \
max_check_result_reaper_time, have been deprecated. Because of the new worker \
architecture, checks are no longer reaped, but they are fed back to core by the \
worker processes. As a result, these variables no longer make sense.
All file and directory configuration variables in the main nagios.cfg \
can now use paths that are relative to the location of nagios.cfg.
Although rarely used in the past, creating nagios objects in the main \
nagios.cfg configuration file was allowed. This is now prohibited.
Macros:
Additions - A new macro, $CHECKSOURCE$, has been added which contains \
information about what process performed a check.
Changes - If use_large_installation_tweaks is set, the \
$HOSTGROUPMEMBERS$ and $SERVICEGROUPMEMBERS$ macros are no longer exported \
because they can consume the available space for environment variables.
Macros are normally available as environment variables when check, event \
handler, notification, and other commands are run. This can be rather CPU \
intensive in large Nagios installations, so you can disable the export of \
environment variables completely with the enable_environment_macros option.
Macro information can be found here.
Query Handler:
The query handler is a general purpose communication mechanism that allows \
external entities to communicate with Nagios Core in a well-defined manner. As \
of this writing, all communication with the query handler takes place through a \
Unix-domain socket whose location is defined by the query_socket configuration \
variable.
There are currently 5 built-in query handlers.
core - provides Nagios Core management and information
wproc - provides worker process registration, management and information
nerd - provides a subscription service to the Nagios Event Radio \
Dispatcher (NERD)
help - provides help for the query handler
echo - implements a basic query handler that simply echoes back the \
queries sent to it
More information about the query handler interface, including an \
introduction to creating a custom query handler, can be found in the \
source-supplied documentation.
Core Workers:
Previously, all host and service checks were performed by the full Nagios \
Core process. This required forking the Nagios Core process for every check. The \
full Nagios Core process includes a lot of things that are not required to \
actually perform the check, including check scheduling, downtime handling, \
processing external commands, etc. As a result, forking the Nagios Core process \
was much slower than was necessary. When the actual check was run, the forked \
process again forked a shell to run the check and the shell forked to run the \
plugin.
In addition, disk files were used as the inter-process communication (IPC) \
mechanism between the forked Nagios process doing the checking and the main \
Nagios process handling the check results.
In Nagios Core 4, the process of performing host and service checks is now \
accomplished using a lightweight worker processes. Standard worker processes \
start up with the main Nagios Core process and additional, special-purpose \
workers, can be started at any time after Nagios Core starts. If the check \
command is "simple" (no shell escapes), the worker process can run the \
command directly, avoiding the 2 additional forks previously required.
Also in Nagios Core 4, the worker processes report the check results to the \
main Nagios Core process using in-memory IPC mechanisms (the query handler \
interface), eliminating the disk I/O bottleneck that used to be an issue in \
large installations.
When a worker process registers with the main Nagios Core process, it tells \
Nagios Core what checks it will handle. This feature allows external authors to \
create special-purpose workers which are optimized to perform certain checks. A \
sample special-purpose ping check worker is included with the Nagios Core source \
code in the worker/ping subdirectory.
More information about workers, including an introduction to creating custom \
workers can be found in the source-supplied documentation.
Nagios Event Radio Dispatcher (NERD):
The Nagios Event Radio Dispatcher (NERD) is a query handler based service \
that streams Nagios Core events to the subscriber. Currently, there are three \
channels that can be subscribed to: hostchecks, servicechecks and opathchecks.
libnagios:
libnagios is a library of functions that can be used by developers of query \
handlers and worker processes. libnagios currently contains the following \
components.
bitmap - bitmap library for calculating dependency graphs
dkhash - dual-keyed hash api
fanout - sparsely populated array used for downtime, comments, and \
worker jobs
iobroker - I/O broker library for multiplexing between running tasks and \
the master nagios process.
iocache - I/O caching libary for bulk-reading requests and parsing them
kvvec - key/value library for parsing requests and building responses
nsock - socket library for connecting to and communicating through the \
qh socket
nspath - general purpose path library for converting between relative \
and absolute paths
nsutils - small library with worker related utilities
pqueue - pqueue library written by Volkan Yazici
runcmd - for spawning and reaping commands
skiplist - skiplist library used within Nagios Core
squeue - for maintaining a queue of the running job's timeouts
worker - for utils and stuff nifty to have if you're a worker
Documentation:
Documentation of Nagios Core internals is now provided as part of the source \
distribution. To create an HTML version of this documentation run 'make dox' \
from the root of the source distribution tree. The doxygen utilities must be \
installed to make this documentation.
Tests:
A much more complete test suite is now incuded with the Nagios Core source \
distribution.
RPM Spec File:
The RPM spec file has been completely overhauled to support more current \
standards.
Deprecated Features:
Extended Host and Service Information - The hostextinfo and \
serviceextinfo objects are now deprecated and should not be used. Support for \
them will be removed in a future version. The same information specified in the \
hostextinfo and serviceextinfo objects can be specified in the host and service \
object respectively.
-x/--dont-verify-paths command line option (Don't check for circular \
object paths) - Because configuration checking is now so much faster, the option \
to skip checking for circular object paths has been deprecated.
The following configuration variables have been deprecated: \
check_result_reaper_frequency, max_check_result_reaper_time, sleep_time, \
external_command_buffer_slots, command_check_interval
Obsoleted Features:
Failure Prediction - As noted above, the failure_prediction_enabled flag \
has been removed from both host and service object definitions. Failure \
predition was never fully implemented and would require breaking the paradigm \
that Nagios Core knows nothing about the performance data returned by plugins. \
Failure prediction is much more approprately handled by an add-on than by Nagios \
Core.
-o/--dont-verify-objects command line option - This option, while \
accepted in Nagios Core 3, has neither been advertized nor has had any effect \
for quite some time. The option has been removed in Nagios Core 4.
Embedded Perl - Embedded Perl has historically been the least tested and \
the most problem prone part of Nagios Core. A significant part of the issue is \
that there are so many versions of Perl available. The performance enhancements \
provided by the new worker process architecture make up for any performance loss \
due to the removal of embeddd Perl. In addition, the worker process architecture \
makes possible the implementation of a special purpose worker to persistently \
load and run Perl plugins. The following configuration variables that were \
related to embedded Perl have been obsoleted: use_embedded_perl_implicitly, \
enable_embedded_perl, p1_file.
Miscellaneous:
Object IDs - Primarily only of interest to developers, all of the \
first-class objects now have object IDs. First-class objects are timeperiod, \
command, contact, host, service, escalations, dependencies and all kinds of \
groups. Object IDs are not persistent and are recreated on each restart.
Files: