[Pkg-nagios-devel] Bug#629640: check_ping: should fall back to IPv4 if IPv6 is not available

[Chris Butler]

Package: nagios-plugins
Version: 1.4.15-3
Severity: minor

When neither the -4 nor -6 options are specified on the command-line, one
would expect the check_ping plugin to try both (as most programs do).
Instead, if it finds an AAAA record for the hostname given, it will *only*
try IPv6, and fail if no IPv6 connectivity is available.

e.g. on a fully dual-stacked host:

chrisb at cob:~$ /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_ping -H www.google.co.uk -w 3000.0,80% -c 5000.0,100% -p 1
PING OK - Packet loss = 0%, RTA = 19.56 ms|rta=19.555000ms;3000.000000;5000.000000;0.000000 pl=0%;80;100;0

but on a machine with IPv4 only:

chrisb at squeeze-vm:~$ /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_ping -H www.google.co.uk -w 3000.0,80% -c 5000.0,100% -p 1
CRITICAL - Network Unreachable (www.google.co.uk)


We noticed this earlier today, when Google started publishing an AAAA record
for www.google.co.uk et al. Happy IPv6 day ;)

I realise this testcase may stop working after today, but any host that
publishes both A and AAAA records should do (e.g. ftp.uk.debian.org)

Set to 'minor' severity, since using the -4 and -6 options works, and if
you're specifically testing for v4/v6 connectivity you'd be using them.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 6.0.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'proposed-updates')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-openvz-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages nagios-plugins depends on:
ii  nagios-plugins-basic          1.4.15-3   Plugins for the nagios network mon
ii  nagios-plugins-standard       1.4.15-3   Plugins for the nagios network mon

nagios-plugins recommends no packages.

Versions of packages nagios-plugins suggests:
ii  nagios3                       3.2.1-2    A host/service/network monitoring 

-- no debconf information

-- 
Chris Butler <chrisb at debian.org>
  GnuPG Key ID: 4096R/49E3ACD3