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I am reading the nagios.cfg file documentation and cannot see where it says what options are required and what options are optional. Are all of these optional? If not where can I find which are optional?

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/nagioscore/3/en/configmain.html

2 Answers 2

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Backup the configuration file:

# cp -a /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg.bak

Comment out all the options:

# sed -i 's/^/#/' /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

and verify the configuration data:

# nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

you will see something like this:

Checking services...
Error: There are no services defined!
    Checked 0 services.
Checking hosts...
Error: There are no hosts defined!
    Checked 0 hosts.
Checking contacts...
Error: There are no contacts defined!
    Checked 0 contacts.
...
Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors:   3

So, you need to include some config files which defined at least a host, some services and a contact:

cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/commands.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/contacts.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/timeperiods.cfg
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/templates.cfg
...
cfg_file=/usr/local/nagios/etc/objects/localhost.cfg

Reverify:

Checking services...
    Checked 8 services.
Checking hosts...
    Checked 1 hosts.
Checking contacts...
    Checked 34 contacts.
...

Total Warnings: 0
Total Errors:   0
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  • It's much cleaner to use cfg_dir, rather than a long list of cfg_file lines. Any file whose name ends with .cfg in the cfg_dir will be (recursively) included (concatenated) prior to conf parsing. This allows you to structure your config in a way that makes the most sense to you (e.g., by client, by subnet, by OS type, by tier, etc.)
    – Keith
    Dec 28, 2011 at 22:27
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Usually, when a configuration option is not specified, it will be assigned a default value. Yes, the link you posted does not state whether an option is optional or not. However, default values are specified. If such a value is suitable for your needs, you don't need to include it in your config or you can include it commented out.

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