In Nagios 2 there is a limit to plugin output measured in Bytes (forget the number) - it amounts to about 252 characters before the output is truncated. Nagios 3 fixes this potential problem. I'm pretty sure the original intent was as a security or performance precaution...but there are definitely cases where longer output is needed. The guideline is still a very good one though. Output as shown below is great to parse for graphing - but our admins don't like looking through it to find the actual problem (notice the output is truncated too)
D:\ Label:D-Drive Serial Number 8227abb4: 68% C:\ Label: Serial Number 54b7b1f1: 59% I:\ Label:I-Drive Serial Number a2c908c2: 77% G:\ Label:G-Drive Serial Number d27bf28d: 23% E:\ Label:E-Drive Serial Number d63b1ba7: 95%used(926297MB/978123MB) (>90% -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of stan Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 11:20 AM To: Marc Powell Cc: nagios List; Stewart Flood Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Thoughts about a custom plugin On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 10:16:45AM -0500, Marc Powell wrote: > > On Jul 20, 2008, at 9:28 AM, stan wrote: > > > > After having looked at the way Nagios plugins work, i have a couple of > > concerns about this design. The first is the rule that says the status > > returned by a plugin should be less than 8 characters. The 2nd is > > that, for > > Perhaps I'm not following but I'm not aware of any such restriction. > Nagios only really cares about the exit _code_ code of a plugin (1-4) > and the text is for humans only. That text can be quite large. In > nagios-2 it must all be on one line. There is a limit but it depends > on how you're getting your results back to nagios but in all cases is > much greater than 8 characters (i.e. ~500 at minimum I believe for > passive checks). In nagios-3 it can be split across multiple lines > (with documented caveats) with no limit I believe (but check the > documentation). > Sorry for the 8, it was supposed to be 80, and came from a web page I read about developing NAGIO plugins. If I recall the reason corectly, it was because that status might go to a printed report? -- One of the main causes of the fall of the roman empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null