NPC Quick Start Guide

NPC is designed to be a complete web based UI replacement to Nagios while fully integrating into Cacti using the Cacti Plugin Architecture. This integration will provide a single point of access for trending and alert monitoring.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since this is a fresh port of a 10 year old Cacti plugin, you should be using it in a non-production setup until further migration testing has been performed by the Cacti community.

Features

A complete Nagios UI replacement integrated into Cacti.
A feature rich user interface developed on ExtJS.
A central location to monitor trending and alerting.
All NPC data is updated asynchronously via JSON (no reloading web pages).
Automated importing/syncing of hosts from Nagios to Cacti (N2C).
The UI can be customized on a per user basis.

Usage

With the exception of some installation notes documentation is very slim. Watch the forums and the NPC GitHub for additional info. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Most lists including services or hosts can be double clicked to open additional detail screens.
Most lists including services or hosts can be right clicked to popup a context menu used to issue service or host commands.
If a graph is mapped to a service or host, a graph icon will be displayed in the hosts and services screens. A single left click of this icon will popup the graph.
Most green check marks (started/enabled) or most red X (stopped/disabled) can be double clicked to toggle the option (requires that remote commands are enabled.)
Most grid columns can be re-ordered via drag and drop.
Most grid columns can be hidden and currently hidden columns can be viewed by clicking a down arrow to the right of the column heading.
Dashboard portlets can be closed or minimized. Closed portlets can be made visible again by clicking the Portlets button on the far right of the toolbar on the Dashboard tab and then select which portlets you want displayed.
All changes to the interface (portlets, column order, etc.) are saved server side on a per user basis. Customize the UI your way and it is available anywhere you login.
Importing Nagios hosts is done from the N2C link on the left side tree menu. Before starting an import you need to click in the template field to the right of the hostgroup you are importing. Doing so will expose a select box for assigning a host template. Presently, this may be broken in Cacti 1.x due to it's redesigned tree architecture.

Installation

The remainder of the document provides the steps that are required to install and configure the NPC Plugin for Cacti.

Requirements

Below are the minimum requirements:

Cacti 1.2.1
NDOUtils 1.4b7
Nagios 3.x

The NPC Plugin, first written for Cacti 0.8.7, has been updated to work with Cacti 1.2.x. However, testing has been very light. We will need feedback from users as to its usability with this Cacti version.

It is anticipated that there will be many changes forthcoming as we review the architecture and the ExtJS framework to see how it co-exists with the Cacti Framework. So far so good.

The default memory limit for PHP probably will not be enough to run NPC. Edit /etc/php.ini and update the memory_limit option if you find times when NPC is causing Cacti to run out of memory.

Installing NPC

Grab the latest version of NPC from GitHub using the following steps:

cd <path_to_cacti>/plugins
git clone https://github.com/Cacti/plugin_npc.git npc
Ensure permissions are set for the apache user to read
login to Cacti as an admin.
Install the NPC Plugin
1. Go to Console > Configuration > Plugins
2. Click the Install link to the left of the 'Npc' plugin line
3. Next, click 'Enable' link to the left of the 'Npc' plugin line
You can find the NPC plugin options under Console > Configuration > Settings section

Without NDO2DB feeding Nagios data into NPC the dashboard (and other screens) will be empty.

Next, there are a few NPC settings to add/update. Goto Console > Configuration > Settings > NPC.

Remote Commands - Check the checkbox to enable remote commands. At the moment this is system wide so all users that can access NPC will be able to execute commands.
Nagios Command File Path - Add the path to the Nagios command file. It will be something like /usr/local/nagios/var/rw/nagios.cmd
Nagios URL - The URL to the Nagios web interface is used to get access to the status map and reporting CGI's. You can also access the Nagios UI by clicking the "Nagios" link in the left hand "Navigation" pane in NPC.
Set the date and time format to your liking.

Configuring Nagios

Refer to the Nagios documentation for installation. Some parts of NPC like reporting and the status map use the Nagios interface by wrapping the Nagios CGI's in an Iframe. Be sure to have the Nagios web UI working if you want to use the reporting and status map features.

The following parameters are found in the Nagios configuration file nagios.cfg

The power of NPC is greatly enhanced by the ability to issue commands to the Nagios process. To enable external commands in Nagios set:

check_external_commands=1

Check external commands as often as possible.

command_check_interval=-1

Broker all events.

event_broker_options=-1

The path to the event broker module and config file which you will install next. This example assumes Nagios is installed in /usr/local/nagios. Adjust the path to suit your installation.

broker_module=/usr/local/nagios/bin/ndomod.o
config_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/ndomod.cfg

If you want to use performance data from Nagios plugins to create graphs in Cacti then set the following parameter.

process_performance_data=1

Setting host_perfdata_command and service_perfdata_command is not necessary. The performance data will be written to the NPC database where it can be polled by cacti using the perfdata.php script included with NPC.

Installing/Configuring NDO2DB

NOD2DB is part of the NDOUTILS package. Nagios hands events off to NDO2DB via the event broker. NDO2DB handles the actual inserts of Nagios data into the NPC tables.

Instructions for compiling, installing, and configuring NDO2DB are included in the README file of the ndoutils package. The README has four sections. Skip the section on initializing the database.

Follow the 'COMPILING INSTRUCTIONS' section of the README.
Skip the 'INITIALIZING THE SQL DATABASE' section of the README
Follow the 'INSTALLING THE NDOMOD BROKER MODULE' section of the README
Follow the 'INSTALLING THE NDO2DB DAEMON' section of the README

Edit /usr/local/nagios/etc/ndo2db.cfg and add/update the following parameters:

db_servertype=mysql
db_host=localhost (the host/ip where cacti database is running)
db_port=3306
db_name=cacti (Your cacti database name)
db_prefix=npc_
db_user=<user> (Your cacti database user)
db_pass=<pass> (Your cacti user password)

The user/pass you assign needs select, insert, update, delete on all the npc_ tables.

ndo2db can communicates with the Nagios ndo2db.o module via unix socket or TCP. Use whatever works for you (I use the TCP mode) but you need to set it the same in both the ndo2db.cfg and ndomod.cfg.

NOTE: The config_output_options parameter in ndomod.cfg must be set to 2 (config_output_options=2).

Here are working ndo2db.cfg and ndomod.cfg configs. As noted above the database parameters need to be changed for your database.

ndo2db.cfg

ndo2db_user=nagios
ndo2db_group=nagios
socket_type=tcp
socket_name=/usr/local/nagios/var/ndo.sock
tcp_port=5668
db_servertype=mysql
db_host=localhost
db_port=3306
db_name=DATABSE_NAME
db_user=DATABASE_USER
db_pass=DATABASE_PASSWORD
db_prefix=npc_
max_timedevents_age=1440
max_systemcommands_age=10080
max_servicechecks_age=10080
max_hostchecks_age=10080
max_eventhandlers_age=44640
debug_level=1
debug_verbosity=1
debug_file=/usr/local/nagios/var/ndo2db.debug
max_debug_file_size=1000000

ndomod.cfg

instance_name=default
output_type=tcpsocket
output=127.0.0.1
tcp_port=5668
output_buffer_items=5000
buffer_file=/usr/local/nagios/var/ndomod.tmp
file_rotation_interval=14400
file_rotation_timeout=60
reconnect_interval=15
reconnect_warning_interval=15
data_processing_options=-1
config_output_options=2

NOTE: There have been reports of the ndo2db process dying (regularly) on old versions of ndo2db. To get this, setup the process to respawn via init or systemd. If you have trouble with the daemon dying you can add the following line to /etc/inittab. Only do this if ndo2db frequently dies unexpectedly on you.

ndo:345:respawn:/usr/local/nagios/bin/ndo2db -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/ndo2db.cfg

After editing inittab issue the following command:

telinit Q

You may see messages like the following in your syslog when using init to respawn ndo2db:

Apr 19 11:11:55 acid init: Id "ndo" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

Besides muddying the logs there is no harm and so far this is the only way I have been able to keep ndo2db running.

Bugs and Feature Enhancements

Bug and feature enhancements for the npc plugin are handled in GitHub. If you find a first search the Cacti forums for a solution before creating an issue in GitHub.

Changelog

--- develop ---

issue#13: Nagios sync partially to NPC plugin - only can see update of hostgroup

--- 3.1 ---

issue: Adding some missing columns to a few tables
issue: Undefined variables in constrollers settings.php

--- 3.0 ---

feature: compatibility improvements for cacti 1.2.x

rcgreenw/plugin_npc