How It Works
------------
Pretty simple. each contact has multiple addresses defined using the format;
contact_protocol:address:number_of_notifications
When the notification count is equal to or greater than the
number_of_notifications, that protocol is triggered with the resulting address.
This allows for personalized escalation.
Templates
---------
Each contact protocol should accept 5 bits of data:
subject: subject of the alert
message: content / body of the alert -- put all your gory details here
title: specifically for prowl/nma -- maps to the application field
priority: defaults to 'normal' (again more specific to prowl/nma), but can be
overridden [optional]
url: prowl only -- urls can be embedded in the message but prowl suppots opening
a defined url in another application [optional]
Templates are read from the template_dir (passed as the sole argument to the
script if required) in the following order.
{protocol}.{notification_type}.template.sh
{protocol}.template.sh
template.sh
At a minimum the last should exist and be sane for all notifications.
This allows you to define the content of the notification based on the protocol
as well as the notification type (ack, recovery, etc).
All nagios macros are valid within the templates.
Templates are sourced from the script, so they must be valid shellcode. This
means you can do tricky logic in templates as well.
This also means be careful what you put in here, the shellcode is sourced blind.
Example Nagios Configuration
----------------------------
define contact {
contact_name 'Junior Admin'
email jadmin@example.com
pager 4545551212
service_notification_commands beacon, notify-by-email, notify-by-pager
address1 prowl:{apikey}:3 # after the 3rd notification -- send via prowl to the designated api key
address2 nma:{apikey}:4 # after the 4th notification -- send via nma to designated api key
address3 email:--email-- # use the email protocol handler -- uses 'email' from the contact
}
Defined Protocols
-------------------
It's trivial to add another contact protocol, in most cases you need a small
helper script that knows how to handle the 5 portions of the template. However
being shell code it's trival to use echo ... | ... as well.
Just add another option to the case statement defining another contact protocol.
[2]
prowl: http://www.prowlapp.com
pushover: https://github.com/jedda/OSX-Monitoring-Tools/blob/master/notify_by_pushover.sh
nma: https://nma.usk.bz/index.jsp
email: /usr/bin/mail
sms: stubbed but not implemented [1]
1. SMS is generally easier to send using an email gateway by the provider in
question. However a small wrapper around qpage/sendpage would work here as
well.
2. Use wrappers and pass arguments. Pipes and escapes can get a little messy
with several levels of shell indirection.