Tag Archive for 'Wizard'

Monitoring Website Defacement with Nagios XI 2014

There’s a new wizard in town and I don’t mean Gandalf the White!  The Website Defacement Wizard is a new wizard available in the latest release of Nagios XI 2014.

One of the worst things a company can suffer PR-wise is website defacement. At best, it will require restoring the page, and at worst it can be a nightmare of log review, security patches, and damage control. Time is of the essence in such a situation, so being alerted as soon as possible is of utmost importance. That’s where the Website Defacement Wizard comes in handy.

The Website Defacement Wizard allows you to monitor a web page for certain keywords, either alerting if they are present in the case of offensive or spam-related words, or alerting if they are missing, which may indicate a whole-page defacement. We provide a few pre-defined lists of words you may wish to look for, sorted into categories such as Profanity and Gambling. You can also add your own words or phrases, or remove certain words if they might be expected on the page (such as “unisex” on a page discussing clothing). If you would rather check to ensure the existence of a word or phrase, the process is similar and will be described in this article.

So without further delay, let’s walk through setting up a check:

In the Nagios XI interface, go to the Configure tab and click Run the Monitoring Wizard. Scroll all the way down the page and click Website Defacement.

Website Defacement Wizard - Nagios XI

Continue reading ‘Monitoring Website Defacement with Nagios XI 2014’

Monitoring a Linux Machine with Nagios XI & NCPA

Last week we discussed monitoring a Windows machine with NCPA and Nagios XI to make sure that the server was functioning properly.  In order to showcase the cross-platform capabilities of NCPA (Nagios Cross-Platform Agent) we decided it would be a good idea to show how to monitor a Linux machine as well.  In this article I will show you how easy it is to monitor a Linux box using the same exact agent that we used to monitor the Windows box last week.  Here’s how you do it.

1. Installing and configuring NCPA on the remote box

Instructions on installing NCPA can be found here: NCPA Installations Instructions. For more info on acquiring the correct RPM packages for your Linux distro, please check our documentation here: Finding the Right RPM

Run the following commands from the command line as root:

Note: For my example, I used CentOS 6.5, 64-bit, so I ran:

Next, you will have to edit the “community_string” in the NCPA config file. The “community_string” is the token that you will use to log into the agent and also allows the Nagios XI server to communicate with the NCPA agent. This process is comparable to entering a token in the GUI installer when monitoring a Windows machine. Continue reading ‘Monitoring a Linux Machine with Nagios XI & NCPA’

Monitoring Mac OS/X with Nagios XI

** Attention Mac OS/X Beta Testers **

We have put together a Mac OS/X Agent and Wizard for Nagios XI to allow easy monitoring of Mac OS/X Servers and workstations along with some documentation to put it all together.

Installing the Nagios XI Mac OSX Agent

Monitoring OSX with Nagios XI 

Please take these for a test drive and let us know how we can improve them.

 

How to Clone a Host Along With Its Services in Nagios XI

Many customers, especially the ones running large environments, have been asking us what is the best way to clone a host along with its services. We have a great tool called “Bulk Host Import Wizard” which does just that.

You can learn more about this wizard by reading our “Nagios XI – Bulk Host Import Usage” document, posted on the Nagios Library.

You can download the wizard from the Nagios Exchange by following this link.