Installing Nagios on linux is well documented and relativly straightforward. Installing Nagios on OSX however, can be a bit different, and in my case presented a number of unique issues that I hope this guide might address.
If you run into an odd error messages, check the Troubleshooting section below, it might have the answer you're looking for!
Nagios requires a few things to work properly, here's what I needed to get things running:
- Apache
- PHP
- Upgrading Xcode to 3.2.6+
I used MacPorts for this:
$ sudo port install zlib
$ sudo port install libpng
$ sudo port install jpeg
$ sudo port install gd2
I ran into a few problems here, see the Troubleshooting section for more information.
You may run into some brew dependency issues, but here's the command for installing Nagios:
$ sudo brew install nagios
I ran into some issues at this point that required me upgrade a variety of things, all of which were pretty straightforward and Googleable.
Assuming things went well, you can check to see if Nagios is installed with:
$ nagios
Nagios Core 3.4.1
Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors
Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad
Last Modified: 05-11-2012
License: GPL
Website: http://www.nagios.org
Usage: nagios [options] <main_config_file>
Options:
-v, --verify-config Verify all configuration data
-s, --test-scheduling Shows projected/recommended check scheduling and other
diagnostic info based on the current configuration files.
-x, --dont-verify-paths Don't check for circular object paths - USE WITH CAUTION!
-p, --precache-objects Precache object configuration - use with -v or -s options
-u, --use-precached-objects Use precached object config file
-d, --daemon Starts Nagios in daemon mode, instead of as a foreground process
Visit the Nagios website at http://www.nagios.org/ for bug fixes, new
releases, online documentation, FAQs, information on subscribing to
the mailing lists, and commercial support options for Nagios.
Now on to configuration settings and debugging rogue issues.
There are two primary Nagios configuration files that I needed to modify to get Nagios running. Knowing the location of these files, expecially the nagios.cfg file is critical to running Nagios.
- nagios.cfg
- cgi.cfg
Another important Nagios file is the nagios.conf file, not to be confused with nagios.cfg. This .conf file is a good place to get your general Apache configuration settings.
This file was located in the /usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/ folder on my machine and the important contents are as follows:
ScriptAlias /nagios/cgi-bin "/usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/cgi-bin"
<Directory "/usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/cgi-bin">
# SSLRequireSSL
Options ExecCGI
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
# Order deny,allow
# Deny from all
# Allow from 127.0.0.1
AuthName "Nagios Access"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/nagios/htpasswd.users
Require valid-user
</Directory>
Alias /nagios "/usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/share/nagios/htdocs"
<Directory "/usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/share/nagios/htdocs">
# SSLRequireSSL
Options None
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
# Order deny,allow
# Deny from all
# Allow from 127.0.0.1
AuthName "Nagios Access"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /usr/local/etc/nagios/htpasswd.users
Require valid-user
</Directory>
These settings need to be transplated into the Apache config files, which just happens to be our next step.
For Nagios to work with Apache (and be accessable via localhost) we need modify the Apache configurations file.
First we need to find out where our httpd.conf is located:
$ whereis httpd
/usr/sbin/httpd
$ /usr/sbin/httpd -V
Server version: Apache/2.2.21 (Unix)
Server built: Dec 5 2011 20:56:38
Server's Module Magic Number: 20051115:30
Server loaded: APR 1.3.8, APR-Util 1.3.9
Compiled using: APR 1.3.8, APR-Util 1.3.9
Architecture: 64-bit
Server MPM: Prefork
threaded: no
forked: yes (variable process count)
Server compiled with....
-D APACHE_MPM_DIR="server/mpm/prefork"
-D APR_HAS_SENDFILE
-D APR_HAS_MMAP
-D APR_HAVE_IPV6 (IPv4-mapped addresses enabled)
-D APR_USE_FLOCK_SERIALIZE
-D APR_USE_PTHREAD_SERIALIZE
-D SINGLE_LISTEN_UNSERIALIZED_ACCEPT
-D APR_HAS_OTHER_CHILD
-D AP_HAVE_RELIABLE_PIPED_LOGS
-D DYNAMIC_MODULE_LIMIT=128
-D HTTPD_ROOT="/usr"
-D SUEXEC_BIN="/usr/bin/suexec"
-D DEFAULT_PIDLOG="/private/var/run/httpd.pid"
-D DEFAULT_SCOREBOARD="logs/apache_runtime_status"
-D DEFAULT_LOCKFILE="/private/var/run/accept.lock"
-D DEFAULT_ERRORLOG="logs/error_log"
-D AP_TYPES_CONFIG_FILE="/private/etc/apache2/mime.types"
-D SERVER_CONFIG_FILE="private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf"
The last line indicates that our httpd.conf file is located in the /private/etc/apache2 directory.
Once you have httpd.conf file open, transplant the Nagios settings from above.
Next, restart the Apache server:
$ sudo apachectl restart
With our basic configurations set, we're just about ready to fire up Nagios.
First we need to check that our Nagios configurations file isn't filled with any nasty errors:
$ sudo nagios -v /usr/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg
If all goes well you should see something similar to this:
Nagios Core 3.4.1
Copyright (c) 2009-2011 Nagios Core Development Team and Community Contributors
Copyright (c) 1999-2009 Ethan Galstad
Last Modified: 05-11-2012
License: GPL
Website: http://www.nagios.org
Reading configuration data...
Read main config file okay...
Processing object config file '/usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/commands.cfg'...
Processing object config file '/usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/contacts.cfg'...
Processing object config file '/usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/timeperiods.cfg'...
Processing object config file '/usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/templates.cfg'...
Processing object config file '/usr/local/etc/nagios/objects/localhost.cfg'...
Read object config files okay...
Running pre-flight check on configuration data...
Checking services...
Checked 8 services.
Checking hosts...
Checked 1 hosts.
Checking host groups...
Checked 1 host groups.
Checking service groups...
Checked 0 service groups.
Checking contacts...
Checked 1 contacts.
Checking contact groups...
Checked 1 contact groups.
Checking service escalations...
Checked 0 service escalations.
Checking service dependencies...
Checked 0 service dependencies.
Checking host escalations...
Checked 0 host escalations.
Checking host dependencies...
Checked 0 host dependencies.
Checking commands...
Checked 24 commands.
Checking time periods...
Checked 5 time periods.
Checking for circular paths between hosts...
Checking for circular host and service dependencies...
Checking global event handlers...
Checking obsessive compulsive processor commands...
Checking misc settings...
Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors: 0
Things look okay - No serious problems were detected during the pre-flight check
If this looks good, we can go ahead and start the Nagios daemon:
$ /usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/bin/nagios -d /usr/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg
We can then verify that the Nagios core is running:
$ ps -aux |grep nagios
lroot 8356 0.4 0.0 2435120 540 s000 R+ 3:38PM 0:00.00 grep nagios
root 3418 0.0 0.0 2463604 640 ?? Ss 1:09PM 0:03.58 /usr/local/Cellar/nagios/3.4.1/bin/nagios -d /usr/local/etc/nagios/nagios.cfg
If you don't see Nagios running, check the **Troubleshooting section below.
You shoud be able to check your results by navigating to http://localhost/nagios.
You may need to login, depending on how you configured the Nagios .cnf files.
That about wraps up the Nagios / OSX. If you have any other problems, check the Troubleshooting below for solutions to some of the larger issues I encountered along the way.
If you're lucky like me, you'll get some error messages while installing the component frameworks. Most of the problems can be fixed by simply updating the dependencies' dependencies with:
$ sudo port upgrade outdated
While installing Nagios I had some issues with my Symlinks. It was likely the result of my failed intial stabs at getting things running.
Either way, here's the solution if you have some problems.
$ sudo brew link jpeg
This caused a new problem. The solution was congealed through a "man's answer" approach, which involved destroying the following files:
bin/cjpeg
bin/djpeg
bin/jpegtran
bin/rdjpgcom
bin/wrjpgcom
include/jconfig.h
include/jerror.h
include/jmorecfg.h
include/jpeglib.h
lib/libjpeg.8.dylib
lib/libjpeg.a
share/man/man1/cjpeg.1
share/man/man1/djpeg.1
share/man/man1/jpegtran.1
share/man/man1/rdjpgcom.1
share/man/man1/wrjpgcom.1
Once I "took out the trash," I re-ran the brew symlink command again and kept moving.
Check the log.
In my case I was receiving the following error:
Error: Could not create external command file '/usr/local/var/lib/nagios/rw/nagios.cmd' as named pipe: (2) -> No such file or directory. If this file already exists and you are sure that another copy of Nagios is not running, you should delete this file.
For whatever reason the rw directory was never created when installing Nagios. The fix was as simple as adding the folder to the /usr/local/var/lib/nagios/ directory.
Check the cgi.cfg for approprate usage settings. You may need to change the authorized users settings or create a user for Apache to autheticate with Nagios.
Thank you for your help.