NConf Installation and Configuration

NConf is a PHP based web-tool for configuring the Nagios monitoring software. The tool is based on PHP / MySQL.

Nagios is one of the best tool for monitoring & alerting, only missing part is web based configuration which is available in modern monitoring systems like cacti.

Using NConf & pnp4nagios Nagios becomes complete monitoring tool.

Features

• effortlessly maintain a distributed Nagios topology
• user-friendly web-GUI
• define host templates for your hosts
• define dependencies between hosts
• browse dependencies graphically
• choose from multiple authentication modes
• import existing Nagios configuration files
• easily expandable and customizable data schema
• perl database API
• customizable appearance
• runs on Linux / Apache / PHP / MySQL

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Install Dependencies
CentOS
yum install httpd php php-mysql mysql-server

Ubuntu
apt-get install apache2 php5 php5-mysql mysql-server perl libdbi-perl libdbd-mysql-perl gawk
Installation.

STEP1

Install Nagios & ensure basic working.

STEP2

Download latest version from http://sourceforge.net/projects/nconf/files/

Extract NConf to /var/www/html/

cd /var/www/html
tar zxvf /download/nconf-1.2.5-0.tgz

Create MySql DB & create dbuser

mysqladmin –user=root create nconf
 
mysql –user=root mysql
GRANT ALL ON nconf.* TO nconf@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘nconf’;

STEP3

Complete installation using NConf web based installation

http://serverip/nconf/

Following snaps are for guidance.

Configuration

Add Host

Define service to check

List of added Hosts

Click on Generate Nagios config to generate nagios configuration file.

By default nagios configuration is saved in nconf/output/.

You can change folder to nagios default configuration folder i.e /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/.

You need to copy latest config from output folder to nagios actual configuration folder.

To make NConf work with Nagios add followings in /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/checkcommands.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contactgroups.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/hosts.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/hostgroups.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/services.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/servicegroups.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/extended_service_info.cfg

Remove check_local* commands from /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/commands.cfg
& below all, as this all contains in checkcommands.cfg generated by nconf.

check_ftp
check_hpjd
check_snmp
check_http
check_ssh
check_dhcp
check_ping
check_pop
check_imap
check_smtp
check_tcp
check_udp
check_nt

With the default installation, nconf generates config in /var/www/html/nconf/output/.

Below is very basic shell script I am using to copy config files to /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/ only if /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz is updated.

#!/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin
 
alias cp=’cp’
 
if [ -d /tmp/nc ]
then
echo exists > /dev/null
else
mkdir /tmp/nc > /dev/null
fi
 
SOURCE=`ls /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz -allh | gawk '{ print $6" "$7" "$8 }'`
SOURCE1=`ls /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz.back -allh | gawk '{ print $6" "$7" "$8 }'`
 
if [ "$SOURCE" = "$SOURCE1" ]
then
echo no_change > /dev/null
else
cd /tmp/nc
tar zxvf /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz
cp -rfva /tmp/nc/Default_collector/* /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/
cp -rfva /tmp/nc/global/* /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/
service nagios reload
chmod 777 /usr/local/nagios/var/rw/nagios.cmd
cp -rfva /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz /var/www/html/nconf/output/NagiosConfig.tgz.back
rm -rf  /tmp/nc/*
fi

While writing this post latest versin of Nconf was 1.2.5, you may like to take a look at upgradation to 1.2.6