Changing thresholds for PING RTT and packet loss

In this recipe, we'll set up a service for a host that monitors PING, and take a look at how to adjust the thresholds for the WARNING and CRITICAL states, done using command arguments. We'll accomplish this by setting up a service for an existing host that's already being checked with a check_command plugin, such as check-host-alive. Our service will be used to monitor not whether the host is completely DOWN, but whether it's responding to PING requests within a reasonable period of time.

This could be useful to notify and assist in diagnosing problems with the actual connectivity of a service or host.

This recipe will therefore serve as a good demonstration of the concepts of supplying arguments to a command, and adjusting the WARNING and CRITICAL thresholds for a particular service.

Getting ready

You should have a Nagios Core 3.0 or newer server with at least one host configured already, and using a check_command plugin of check-host-alive...