Nagios Core Administration Cookbook

Monitoring PING for any host

In this recipe, we'll learn how to set up PING monitoring for a host. We'll use the check_ping plugin, and its command of the same name, to send ICMP ECHO requests to a host. We'll use this as a simple diagnostic check to make sure that the host's network stack is responding in a consistent and timely fashion, in much the same way as an administrator might use the ping command interactively to check the same properties.

Getting ready

You should have a Nagios Core 3.0 or newer server with at least one host configured already. We'll use the example of corinth.naginet, a host defined in its own file. You should also understand the basics of how hosts and services relate, which is covered in the recipes of Chapter 1,