nagios.txt.md

+## Monitoring Bacula with Nagios
+
+### 1. Introduction
+
+#### 1.1 Copyright And License
+
+This document, **Monitoring Bacula with Nagios** is copyrighted © 2009
+by **Kevin Keane**. Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or
+modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
+License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software
+Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and
+with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is available at
+<http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html> .
+
+#### 1.2 Disclaimer
+
+No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted. Use the
+concepts, examples and information at your own risk. There may be errors
+and inaccuracies which could damage to your system. Though this is
+highly unlikely, proceed with caution. The author(s) do not accept
+responsibility for your actions.
+
+All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless specifically
+noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded
+as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark. Naming of
+particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.
+
+#### 1.3 Credits / Contributors
+
+This solution was loosely inspired by R.I.Pienaar\'s monitoring script
+at
+<http://www.devco.net/archives/2006/07/19/monitoring_bacula_jobs_using_nagios.php>
+
+#### 1.4 Overview
+
+The goal is to see the status of each bacula job in
+[nagios](http://www.nagios.org), including alerts etc. Each backup job
+should be listed as a service under the host named BACKUPS. The service
+name is the bacula job name.
+
+Any questions? Please post to the [bacula-users mailing
+list](https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users), or
+visit <http://www.4nettech.com> and use the Contact Us form.
+
+This example guide is using nagios passive checks, if you wish to use
+nagios active checks, please see [Monitoring Bacula with Nagios active
+checks](nagios_active_checks)
+
+### 2. What you need
+
+-   Nagios (obviously). Test to make sure that the nagios server is
+    working properly.
+-   Bacula (obviously). We will only touch the director configuration.
+-   Nagios NSCA. Make sure that send_nsca is working properly from the
+    machine that the bacula director is running on.
+
+### 3. Modifications to Nagios
+
+Create a configuration file backups.cfg in the appropriate location, and
+include it in your nagios.cfg file (or put it in a directory that is
+already included in nagios.cfg). All the configuration will go into this
+file.
+
+Create a service template for the backup jobs in backups.cfg. Since the
+backup checks will be using passive service checks, we derive from the
+passive_service template. The backups will only run once a day, and in
+some cases may take a couple of hours to complete. I actually skip the
+day after a full backup, in case the full backup takes more than 24
+hours. As a result, we have to wait 72 hours until we can be sure that a
+backup didn\'t run. 72 hours is 259200 seconds. We will use that as the
+freshness_threshold, and later also as the notification_interval.
+
+If the backup didn\'t run, we should consider it a critical error. Thus,
+we use check_dummy and have it return 2 (for CRITICAL) as the
+check_command. With passive checks, the check_command is only called
+when the host has not reported for the freshness_threshold.
+
+Assuming that you already have the standard nagios passive_service
+template working:
+
+    define service {
+            name                            backup_service
+            use                             passive_service
+            freshness_threshold             259200
+            check_command                   check_dummy!2
+            register                        0
+    }
+
+Next, we need to define the host. This is fairly standard. Since this is
+not an actual host, the address does not really matter, and we can
+always return OK from the host check command.
+
+    define host {
+          host_name                       BACKUPS
+          alias                           Our backup
+          address                         <bacula-dir host name>
+          use                             generic-host
+          check_command                   check_dummy!0
+          max_check_attempts              10
+          notification_interval           259200
+          notification_period             24x7
+          notification_options            d,u,r
+          contact_groups                  mainoffice
+    }
+
+Finally, we need to add the bacula jobs. For each job, add a service
+definition (substituting the correct bacula job name, of course):
+
+    define service {
+          service_description             <bacula job name>
+          use                             backup_service
+          host_name                       BACKUPS
+    }
+
+Run the nagios pre-flight check. Depending on your Linux distribution,
+it is probably something similar to this:
+
+    rcnagios check
+
+or
+
+    service nagios check
+
+If it reports any errors, fix them.
+
+### 3. Modifications to Bacula
+
+Put the following script, called bacula2nagios, into the /usr/local/sbin
+directory on the machine where your bacula-dir is running. Substitute
+the correct name of your Nagios server, of course.
+
+**PITFALL WARNING**: be sure to use the TAB character in the line
+following the send_nsca command. If you use spaces, it \*will not\*
+work.
+
+    #!/bin/bash
+    # Inform nagios about the success (or lack thereof) of the most recent
+    # attempt of each backup job
+    #
+    # args:
+    # $1: job name
+    # $2: status (0 for success, anything else for failure)
+    # $3: whatever you want to appear as the plugin output
+
+    if [ $2 -eq 0 ]
+    then
+        status=0
+    else
+        status=2
+    fi
+
+    send_nsca -H <FQDN of your nagios server> -c /etc/nagios/send_nsca.cfg <<END
+    BACKUPS $1      $status $3
+    END
+
+Make this script executable by the bacula user.
+
+Now edit the JobDefs resource in your bacula-dir.conf file. Add the
+following two lines:
+
+    Run After Job = "/usr/local/sbin/bacula2nagios \"%n\" 0 \"%e %l %v\""
+    Run After Failed Job = "/usr/local/sbin/bacula2nagios \"%n\" 1 \"%e %l %v\""