The Linuxfabrik Monitoring Plugins Collection

This Enterprise Class Check Plugin Collection offers a package of more than 180 Python-based, Nagios-compatible check plugins for Icinga, Naemon, Nagios, OP5, Shinken, Sensu and other monitoring applications. Each plugin is a stand-alone command line tool that provides a specific type of check. Typically, your monitoring software will run these check plugins to determine the current status of hosts and services on your network.

The check plugins run on

Linux - Tested on RHEL 7+, Fedora 30+, Ubuntu Server 16+, Debian 9+, SLES 15+
Windows - Tested on Windows 10+ and Windows Server 2019+

All plugins are written in Python and licensed under the UNLICENSE, which is a license with no conditions whatsoever that dedicates works to the public domain.

The plugins are fast, reliable and use as few system resources as possible. They uniformly and consistently report the same metrics briefly and precisely on all platforms (for example, always „used“ instead of a mixture of „used“ and „free“). Automatic detection and Auto-Discovery mechanisms are built-in where possible. Using meaningful default settings, the plugins trigger WARNs and CRITs only where absolutely necessary. In addition they provide information for troubleshooting. We try to avoid dependencies on 3rd party system libraries where possible.

Support & Sponsoring

The source code is published here without support.

If you need Enterprise Support, conclude a Service Contract.

If you simply like to support our work, please consider donating and become a sponsor:

Do you think more people should know about it? Sharing is caring, so feel free to spread the word. We would really appreciate if you share this on any social media, or link this site on any blog or forum.

Installation

Have a look at the INSTALL document for the various options, including SELinux etc.

Icons

You can download all check plugin icons from download.linuxfabrik.ch. For Icinga, put them in /usr/share/icingaweb2/public/img/icons/.

Check Plugin Poster

See some of our check plugins at a glance on an Icinga server:

If you zoom in, for example on CPU Usage:

Feedback from our Community

Some comments from the community about our monitoring plugins:

… thanks for your awesome plugins.

– Robert Christian

… Thanks for your awesome work & have a good day.

– \Barney

… I can recommend this family of plugins, they are the highest quality I have seen around. …

– u/exekewtable@reddit

Ich bin vor kurzem (via Video vom Icinga Camp) über Eure Monitoringplugins gestolpert. Ganz herzlichen Dank dafür, großartige Arbeit!!

– Christian Lox

… many thanks for your great collection of monitoring plugins! I’ve just found them - clean structure and output, cross-platform, Icinga Directory Basket configurations - loving it and currently migrating step by step most of my checks to use them where possible. 😍

– Bernd Bestel

Nachdem ich beim Versuch, Nagios-Plugins auf VMwares Photon-OS zum laufen zu kriegen, graue Haare gekriegt habe, haben mir eure Plugins zum Ziel verholfen.

– MajorTwip

A well engineered, regularly updated and maintained collection of plugins. Specially focused on Linux servers/VMs and used at large scale by the company developing it.

– straessler

Hello, I stumbled across your collection and am thrilled! Especially the extensive documentary and the Director Baskets are a dream.

– Stefan Beining

Merchandise! ;-)

The „Linuxfabrik Monitoring Plugins“ on a card of our popular Open Source Quartet 2023. 🙂 Click here if you want to get one to play (20 CHF). For more info, here’s the story.

Human Readable Numbers

Regarding the check plugin output, this is how we convert and append symbols to large numbers in a human-readable format (according to Wikipedia Names of large numbers, and other).

Since the primary hosting platform is Linux, which uses IEC, the plugins display byte sizes in powers of 2 (KiB, MiB, GiB etc.) - otherwise it would be very confusing to have the monitoring plugins said something different than the command line.

Value	Symbol	Origin	Type	Description
1000^1	K		Number	Thousand
1000^2	M	SI Symbol	Number	Million (1), Million (2)
1000^3	G	SI Symbol	Number	Milliard (1), Billion (2)
1000^4	T	SI Symbol	Number	Billion (1), Trillion (2)
1000^5	P	SI Symbol	Number	Billiard (1), Quadrillion (2)
1000^6	E	SI Symbol	Number	Trillion (1), Quintillion (2)
1000^7	Z	SI Symbol	Number	Trilliard (1), Sextillion (2)
1000^8	Y	SI Symbol	Number	Quadrillion (1), Septillion (2)
1024^0	B		Bytes	Bytes
1024^1	KiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Kibibytes
1024^2	MiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Mebibytes
1024^3	GiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Gibibytes
1024^4	TiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Tebibytes
1024^5	PiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Pebibytes
1024^6	EiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Exbibytes
1024^7	ZiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Zebibytes
1024^8	YiB	IEC unit	Bytes	Yobibytes
1000^1	KB		Bytes	Kilobytes
1000^2	MB		Bytes	Megabytes
1000^3	GB		Bytes	Gigabytes
1000^4	TB		Bytes	Terrabytes
1000^5	PB		Bytes	Petabytes
1000^6	EB		Bytes	Exabytes
1000^7	ZB		Bytes	Zetabytes
1000^8	YB		Bytes	Yottabytes
1000^1	Kbps		Bits per Second	Kilobits
1000^2	Mbps		Bits per Second	Megabits
1000^3	Gbps		Bits per Second	Gigabits
1000^4	Tbps		Bits per Second	Terrabits
1000^5	Pbps		Bits per Second	Petabits
1000^6	Ebps		Bits per Second	Exabits
1000^7	Zbps		Bits per Second	Zetabits
1000^8	Ybps		Bits per Second	Yottabits
1e-12	ps		Time	Picoseconds
1e-9	ns		Time	Nanoseconds
1e-6	us		Time	Microseconds
1e-3	ms		Time	Milliseconds
1..59	s		Time	Seconds
60	m		Time	Minutes
60*60	h		Time	Hours
606024	D		Time	Days
606024*7	W		Time	Weeks
606024*30	M		Time	Months
606024*365	Y		Time	Years

(1): Traditional European (Peletier, long scale)
(2): US, Canada and modern British (short scale)

Threshold and Ranges

If a check supports ranges, they can be used as follows:

Simple value: A range from 0 up to and including the value
A „Range“ is the same as on nagios-plugins.org: … defined as a start and end point (inclusive) on a numeric scale (possibly negative or positive infinity)., in the format start:end
Empty value after :: positive infinity
~: negative infinity
@: if range starts with @, then alert if inside this range (including endpoints)

Examples:

-w, -c	OK if result is	WARN/CRIT if
10	in (0..10)	not in (0..10)
-10	in (-10..0)	not in (-10..0)
10:	in (10..inf)	not in (10..inf)
:	in (0..inf)	not in (0..inf)
~:10	in (-inf..10)	not in (-inf..10)
10:20	in (10..20)	not in (10..20)
@10:20	not in (10..20)	in 10..20
@~:20	not in (-inf..20)	in (-inf..20)
@	not in (0..inf)	in (0..inf)

Command, Parameters and Arguments

Shell commands like ./file-age --filename='/tmp/*' have two basic parts:

Command name of the program to run (./file-age). May be followed by one or more options, which adjust the behavior of the command or what it will do.
Options/Parameters normally start with one or two dashes to distinguish them from arguments (parameter --filename, value '/tmp/*'). They adjust the behavior of the command. Parameters may be short (-w) or long (--warning). We prefer and often offer only the long version.

Many shell commands may also be followed by one or more arguments, which often indicate a target that the command should operate upon (useradd linus for example) . This does not apply to the check-plugins.

To avoid problems when passing parameter values that start with a -, the command line call must look like this:

Long parameters: ./file-age --warning=-60:3600 (use --param=value instead of --param value).
Short parameters: ./file-age -w-60:3600 (so simply not putting any space nor escaping it in any special way).

Python 3 vs Python 2

All check plugins are available for Python 3.6+, and most of them also for Python 2.7. The Python 2 check plugins have the suffix „2“ (for example cpu-usage2), the Python 3 plugins have the suffix „3“ (for example cpu-usage3).

The Python 3-based check plugins use #!/usr/bin/env python3, while the Python 2-based check plugins use #!/usr/bin/env python2 explicitly.

We stopped maintaining the Python 2-based plugins on 2021-12-31.

How to install the Plugins into Icinga Director

Single / selected Plugins

By defining them manually

If you want to define plugins manually, this is how to do it (example).

Create a command for „cpu-usage“ in Icinga Director > Commands > Commands:

Click „+Add“, choose Command type: Plugin Check Command
Command name: cmd-check-cpu-usage
Command: /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/cpu-usage
Timeout: set it according to hints in the check’s README (usually 10 seconds)
Click the „Add“ button

Tab „Arguments“:

Run /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/cpu-usage --help to get a list of all arguments.
Create those you want to be customizable:
- Argument name --always-ok, Value type: String, Condition (set_if): $cpu_usage_always_ok$
- Argument name --count, Value type: String, Value: $cpu_usage_count$
- Argument name --critical, Value type: String, Value: $cpu_usage_critical$
- Argument name --warning, Value type: String, Value: $cpu_usage_warning$

Tab „Fields“:

Label „CPU Usage: Count“, Field name „cpu_usage_count“, Mandatory „n“
Label „CPU Usage: Critical“, Field name „cpu_usage_critical“, Mandatory „n“
Label „CPU Usage: Warning“, Field name „cpu_usage_warning“, Mandatory „n“

or by importing Baskets

For each check, we provide an Icinga Director Basket that contains at least the Command definition and a matching Service Template (for example, check-plugins/cpu-usage/icingaweb2-module-director/cpu-usage.json). Import this:

either via the WebGUI using Icinga Director > Configuration Baskets > Upload, select the latest entry in the Snapshots tab and restore it
or via icingacli director basket restore < cpu-usage.json -v

Now use the new commands within Service Templates, Service Sets and/or a Single Services.

All Plugins (Linuxfabrik Icinga Director Configuration)

To use the Linuxfabrik Icinga Director configuration, including host templates, notification templates and predefined service sets, you need to generate a single Icinga Director basket file containing the baskets for each check plus all-the-rest.json. Use tools/basket-join to do this.

Create the Icinga Director Basket json file:

If you are using our Fork of the Icinga Director, which introduced uuids, you can use the following command:
```
./tools/basket-join
```

If you are not using our Fork of the Icinga Director, create a basket without uuids:

./tools/basket-join
./tools/remove-uuids --input-file icingaweb2-module-director-basket.json --output-file icingaweb2-module-director-basket-no-uuids.json

Import the resulting icingaweb2-module-director-basket.json:

either via the WebGUI using Icinga Director > Configuration Baskets > Upload, select the latest entry in the Snapshots tab and restore it
or via icingacli director basket restore < icingaweb2-module-director-basket.json -v.

If you get the error message File 'icingaweb2-module-director-basket.json' exeeds the defined ini size., adjust your PHP and/or MariaDB/MySQL settings (as described in [Cant Upload Director Basket] (https://github.com/Icinga/icingaweb2-module-director/issues/2458)):

PHP: increase upload_max_filesize and post_max_size (if you use PHP-FPM, don’t forget to restart this service).
MariaDB/MySQL: increase max_allowed_packet.

If you did not name your master zone master during the initial icinga2 node wizard, find and replace "zone": "master" with "zone": "your-master-zone-name" in the icingaweb2-module-director-basket.json file.

Grafana

There are two options to import the Grafana dashboards. You can either import them via the WebGUI or use provisioning.

When importing via the WebGUI simply import the plugin-name.grafana-external.json file.

If you want to use provisioning, take a look at Grafana Provisioning. Beware that you also need to provision the datasources if you want to use provisioning for the dashboards.

If you want to create a custom dashboards that contains a different selection of panels, you can do so using the tools/grafana-tool utility.

# interactive usage
./tools/grafana-tool assets/grafana/all-panels-external.json
./tools/grafana-tool assets/grafana/all-panels-provisioning.json

# for more options, see
./tools/grafana-tool --help

Tips & Tricks

How can I remove the performance data after the |? Bash: /usr/lib64/nagios/plugins/check-command | cut -f1 -d'|'

Reporting Issues

For now, there are two ways:

Submit an issue (preferred).
Contact us by email or web form and describe your problem.