Configuring notification periods

In this recipe, we'll adjust the configuration for a service that has been bugging us with notifications late at night. We'll arrange to keep checking this host, sparta.example.net, on a 24x7 basis, but we'll prevent it from sending notifications outside of work hours using two of the predefined time periods in the default Nagios Core configuration.

Getting ready

You should have a Nagios Core 4.0 or newer server with at least one host configured already. We'll use the example of sparta.example.net, a host defined in its own file.

How to do it...

We can define the check_period and notification_period for our host as follows:

1. Change to the objects configuration directory for Nagios Core. The default is /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects. If you've put the definition for your host in a different file, move to its directory instead.

   # cd /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects
   

2. Edit the file containing your host definition and find the definition within the file:

   # vi sparta.example...