Installation of NRPE agent on Debian and Ubuntu

This article intends to give the reader a brief introduction on how to install and configure the EPEL upstream version of the NRPE agent on Debian Linux 6, 7, 8 and Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS.

Historically, OP5 has compiled and packaged the NRPE agent for a large number of Linux distributions, but as per Q2 2014 we stopped doing this since it required a lot of maintenance and time. More information on this decision can be found here: https://www.op5.com/blog/blogs/op5-developers-blog/deprecation-notices-q2-2014/

Note that this article is intended for Debian 6, 7, 8 and Ubuntu 16.04 client hosts, and that these steps never should be performed on an OP5 Monitor server.

 

1. Install the NRPE package together with plugins:

# apt-get install nagios-nrpe-server nagios-plugins-basic

2. Create a new file called /etc/nagios/nrpe.d/op5_commands.cfg containing the following information:

These paths to the plugins should match the paths to the installed plugins in step 1.

################################################################################
#
# op5-nrpe command configuration file
#
# COMMAND DEFINITIONS
# Syntax:
#       command[<command_name>]=<command_line>
#
command[users]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_users -w 5 -c 10
command[load]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_load -w 15,10,5 -c 30,25,20
command[check_load]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_load -w 15,10,5 -c 30,25,20
command[swap]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_swap -w 20% -c 10%
command[root_disk]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_disk -w 20% -c 10% -p / -m
command[usr_disk]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_disk -w 20% -c 10% -p /usr -m
command[var_disk]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_disk -w 20% -c 10% -p /var -m
command[zombie_procs]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 5 -c 10 -s Z
command[total_procs]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 190 -c 200
command[proc_named]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 1: -c 1:2 -C named
command[proc_crond]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 1: -c 1:5 -C cron
command[proc_syslogd]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 1: -c 1:2 -C syslog-ng
command[proc_rsyslogd]=/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_procs -w 1: -c 1:2 -C rsyslogd
 
 

3. Now edit /etc/nagios/nrpe.cfg and add your Monitor server(s) address(es) to the allowed_hosts parameter as a comma-separated list in the appropriate section:

allowed_hosts=127.0.0.1,10.0.0.10,10.0.0.11

4. Restart the nrpe agent on the host:


# /etc/init.d/nagios-nrpe-server restart

Now you can add the services via the function "Add UNIX client services" when adding a host in op5 Monitor.

If the host is behind a firewall, or you have enabled firewall software on the host, you need to open for incoming traffic on TCP port 5666.

 

Credits

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