Installing Nagios

Nagios itself as well as the standard plugins are written in C and need to be compiled into a native Linux binary. Both Nagios and Nagios plugins use the standard configure, make, make install approach that is common for most Unix applications written in C.

This section will guide you through either using an automated script for performing the installation, which we recommend, or performing the installation manually.

Upgrading from previous versions

If you already have a previous version of Nagios installed, it is always a good idea to upgrade to the latest Nagios and Nagios plugins. It is especially true if upgrading from Nagios 3 or 2 as Nagios 4 includes performance improvements when monitoring large number of hosts and/or services.

When upgrading, it is recommended that you use the manual steps described later in this chapter, and use same usernames, groups, and paths as when the original installation took place. If you have performed the Nagios installation based on...