If you are running Nagios XI and have tried to install the IBM i provided wizards only to find it complains about them not being a valid wizard and will not install, there is a fix.
The problem lies with the way that IBM packaged the wizards, Nagios has a strict layout requirement for the zip files which is checked as the zip file is uploaded via the wizard install process. If you do not follow the guidelines the install will fail.
The downloads for the plugins can be found at the following link. https://github.com/IBM/nagios-for-i/tree/master/Wizard%20for%20NagiosXI on this page you will find 2 zip files (ibmicustomsql.zip, ibmiservice.zip). These are the zip files required to upload via the Nagios wizard installer for each of the IBM plugins. You can download by clicking the link for the file (it complains about them being too big to download) Then click the download button on the far right.
Once downloaded unzip the files to expose the folders below. (We will just look at the ibmiservice.zip file but the same actions are required for the ibmicustomsql.zip file.)
NOTE: I would also suggest you rename the downloaded zip to ibmiservices_old.zip after unzipping, as we will be creating a new ibmiservices.zip later.
The first folder is ibmiservice, in this folder you will see the following.
The problem is the .svn directory that has been added to the zip file in every directory, to fix up the problem just go through each directory (ibmiservice,logos,plugins,templates) and remove the .svn directories. Now you can zip the content to the same zip file name (its important that the name of the zip and the directories are not changed or the install will fail).
Now we can run the Nagios wizard installer against the new zip file. Go to Admin and select Manage Configuration Wizards. Browse and select the newly created zip file.
Now you can click Upload & Install to install the wizard and you will see the items in the list of installed configuration wizards.
Following the screens to configure your IBM i instance
That is all that is needed. Now you can go ahead and configure each of the systems and start your monitoring.
If you want to look at our AAG product which is a fully supported product for monitoring your IBM i using Nagios, let us know and we can set up a demo. It is a lot faster than the IBM supplied plugin when called from Nagios and provides a lot more capabilities in terms of what can be monitored. We have just released a new version which has approx 128 unique checks covering HA4i, EM4i, MiMiX, BRMS, PowerHA, PTF’s and security Bulletins plus all of the internal IBM i standard checks you would expect. A new HMC check is in the works and should be released soon.
Chris…