As you add services, contacts, contact groups, commands, and devices to Nagios the bulk editing begins to become very tedious. Monarch is a great tool to manage Nagios configuration(.cfg) files.  To install Monarch follow the instructions provided in the README.txt that comes with the product. Below I provide instructions to assist in that installation along with some tips and tricks that I learned along the way.

**UPDATE** I realized when reading back through this article that I had not included a download link for Monarch so click here to download Monarch to manage your Nagios configuration files.

How to Install Monarch

1. Install Perl Modules: Install the following perl modules via the CPAN shell: CGI-Session, Class-Accessor, XML-LibXML-Common, XML-NamespaceSupport, XML-SAX, XML-LibXML-1.58, CGI, DBI, DBD-mysql, File::Copy, CGI-Ajax, Data-FormValidator, JavaScript-DataFormValidator, Carp, IO-Socket, Time-Local, and URI-Escape.First start CPAN.

   [root@server ~]# perl -MCPAN -e shell
   

   Now install the various perl modules.

   cpan> install CGI::Session
   cpan> install Class::Accessor
   cpan> install XML::LibXML::Common
   cpan> install XML::NamespaceSupport
   cpan> install XML::SAX
   cpan> install P/PH/PHISH/XML-LibXML-1.58.tar.gz
   cpan> install CGI
   cpan> install DBI
   cpan> install DBD::mysql
   cpan> install File::Copy
   cpan> install CGI::Ajax
   cpan> install Data::FormValidator
   cpan> install JavaScript::DataFormValidator
   cpan> install Carp
   cpan> install IO::Socket
   cpan> install Time::Local
   cpan> install URI::Escape
   

2. Create Database: Now create the mysql database using the below syntax.

   mysql>create databasse monarch;
   

3. Monarch Install Script: Now run the monarch_setup.pl script which will create all of the necessary database tables for Monarch. Note that this will drop any existing tables in the monarch database and recreate the necessary tables.

   [root@ali monarch-2.5.0]#perl monarch_setup.pl
   

4. Verify Web Server Permissions: Now verify that the web server is a member of the nagios group. If you are using apache and it runs under the apache user then you would see a line similar to the below in your /etc/groups file.

   nagios:x:20002:apache
   

5. Verify .cfg Permissions: Verify that the nagios configuration files have write access for the group level and that the parent folders are searchable. Locate your nagios .cfg files and issue the following command.

   chmod 664 *.cfg
   

   Now make sure the parent folders all have permissions like the following: drwxrwxr-x

6. Open Monarch URL: Now open a browser and enter the following URL: http://userdomain.com/cgi-bin/monarch.cgi
7. Login: Use the following credentials to login to monarch:
   User: super_user
   Password: password
   Make sure to change the password for the super_user immediately or add a new super user with a different login and password. Then delete the super_user account once you have verified the other account to be functional.
8. Set nagios.cfg Folder: Now go to Control >> Setup to set the nagios.cfg folder to the proper directory.
9. Set CGI Configurations: Either load an existing configuration or start a new setup by following the below instructions.A. Load Existing: Visit Control >> Nagios CGI Configuration and choose “Load from File”B. Start New: Visit Control >> Nagios CGI Configuration and choose “Set Defaults”
10. Set Nagios Configurations: Either load an existing configuration or start a new setup by following the below instructions.A. Load Existing: Visit Control >> Nagios Main Configuration and choose “Load from File”B. Start New: Visit Control >> Nagios Main Configuration and choose “Set Defaults”
11. Load Files or Use Samples: Now you need to import your existing nagios templates by visiting Control and clicking on Load or copy the sample configuration files provided with Monarch into your nagios cfg folder and then click on Control followed by clicking on Load.

That is the basic setup to get going. There are a couple of things I noticed along the way that caused issues for me. The main thing being if you are loading in an existing Nagios setup and have any spaces in hostnames, contacts, services, check_commands, etc. then you will have issues importing that data in. Make sure to remove all spaces before attempting to import the configuration files into Monarch and it will save you a huge headache ahead of time.

Example Services with spaces below.

# The following service will monitor the the number of currently logged in users on the remote host.

define service{
use generic-service
host_name server1, server2, server3
service_description CURRENT USERS
check_command check_nrpe!check_users
}

# The following service will monitor the total number of processes on the remote host.

define service{
use generic-service
host_name server1, server2, server3
service_description TOTAL PROCESSES
check_command check_nrpe!check_total_procs
}

Notice the TOTAL PROCESSES and CURRENT USERS lines. You should convert all of these before importing to total_processes and current_users as an example. Again this will save you a lot of trouble during the import.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 7:03 PM and is filed under Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.