[Pkg-nagios-devel] Bug#495681: Bug#495681: Bug#495681: nagios-plugins-basic: check_by_ssh returns "unknown" instead of "critical" when remote host is "down"

[Jan Wagner]

Hi Sean,

On Wednesday 20 August 2008 19:22, sean finney wrote:
> On Tuesday 19 August 2008 10:12:44 pm Jan Wagner wrote:
> > On Tuesday 19 August 2008 18:28, Cyril Bouthors wrote:
> > > check_by_ssh returns STATE_UNKNOWN when remote host is "down". It
> > > makes Nagios think the host is not completely down.
> > >
> > > check_by_ssh must return STATE_CRITICAL when ssh fails.
>
> actually, i don't think that is supposed to be the case.  since it's a
> service being checked *via* ssh, the state of the service can not be known,
> therefore it is "unknown".  a proper nagios config should have some kind of
> host check (and/or service dependencies on check_by_ssh <-> check_ssh) 
> that detects when the host is down, which will return critical and disable
> the checks of the service in question.
>
> at least, this is from my memory of the last time i saw this come up on the
> upstream ml.

thanks for your 2 cents. Since this is the same argument which Alexander and I 
agreed yesterday on IRC, I would say that this is no bug.
check_by_ssh is no real plugin, it is just a transport which can only deliver 
check results of remote checks, like nrpe.
It can only report "STATE_UNKNOWN", cause it doesn't know anything about the 
remote check.

With kind regards, Jan.
-- 
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