The most notable change from Nagios version 2 to 3 (wrt Gentoo packaging) was to change installation paths. Up to version all Nagios related packages got installed in /usr/nagios – this has now been changed to a more FHS-compliant directory structure. For example it’s binaries are now installed at a location you’d expect them to be – /usr/{bin,sbin}, Nagios Plugins are now installed in /usr/{lib,lib64}/nagios/plugins and so on. If you’re looking for a list of general changes and improvements there’s for example the Nagios 3.x Version History.

The following package atoms will be marked as stable:

=net-analyzer/nagios-3.0.6
=net-analyzer/nagios-check_logfiles-2.3.2.1-r1
=net-analyzer/nagios-core-3.0.6-r1
=net-analyzer/nagios-imagepack-1.0-r100
=net-analyzer/nagios-nrpe-2.12-r102
=net-analyzer/nagios-nsca-2.7.2-r100
=net-analyzer/nagios-plugins-1.4.13-r1
=net-analyzer/nagios-plugins-snmp-0.6.0-r1
=net-analyzer/nagios-sap-ccms-plugin-0.7.3-r1
=net-analyzer/pnp4nagios-0.4.12

One thing still missing is Gentoo’s Nagios Guide which Sven Vermeulen started to write some time ago and for which I offered some help – well, sorry … didn’t had time for this one yet :(

But if you’re looking for some documentation on getting started with Nagios 3 there’s a new book, Learning Nagios 3.0,  by Wojciech Kocjan published last October. Lucky me I got a copy of this book for a quick review :) Starting with an introduction to Nagios and description of changes in version 3 this book guides you with setting up your own Nagios monitoring box. From installation, an overview of the Nagios Web Interface and Nagios Plugins all important parts to get started with Nagios are covered – including passive checks via NSCA, remotely executed plugins via NRPE and distributed monitoring. Very useful is a dedicated chapter on SNMP which also describes receiving and integrating SNMP traps with Nagios.

For people already using Nagios chapter 11 is probably the most interesting one.  “Extending Nagios” has hints on getting started with monitoring a VMware Infrastructure using VMware’s Perl API and how to monitor a website effectively – it’s not only good to know that the website it’s reachable but for example also logging in to an onlineshop does work.

If you need a book to get started with Nagios – Learning Nagios 3.0 (TOC) is a good read.

* Virtual ethernet [ !!! ]

Nun gut, offensichtlich hat sich nicht nur der Installer geändert (gut, für “uns” bleibts bei emerge vmware-workstation ;) ), sondern auch die Netzwerkkonfiguration. Musste zuvor ein vmware-config.pl Script ausfgeführt werden, so gibt es nun eine GUI dafür. Problem: Die funktioniert erst, wenn $irgendeine Netzwerkkonfiguration vorhanden ist.

Nach der Installation oder Aktualisierung der VMware Workstation 6.5 ist die Datei /etc/vmware/networking erst einmal völlig leer, erst ein emerge –config vmware-workstation (ja da müssen zwei “-” hin, stehen hier auch – nur das WordPress frisst die, Tipps willkommen) erstellt eine (völlig neue, unabhängig von jedweder bisherigen) Netzwerkkonfiguration. Diese gilt es dann im GUI anzupassen.

tobias@homer ~ $ sudo emerge –config vmware-workstation

Configuring pkg…

Network settings database seems to be invalid,configuring default settings
Configuring Bridged network vmnet0
Configuring hostonly network vmnet1, probing for unused subnet …
Configuring NAT network vmnet8, probing for unused subnet …
Configured default networks – Bridged, Hostonly, NAT

Über das Tab Edit -> Virtual Network Editor lässt sich selbiger nun öffen.

Achja, auch das Icon im Benachrichtigungsfeld taucht mit der Workstation 6.5 jetzt wieder bei mir auf :)

Achja, für Uwe: Ich hab dabei rein zufällig die Shared-Folders entdeckt ;) In den Eigenschaften der jeweiligen virtuellen Maschine unter Optionen kann man die Shared-Folders konfigurieren. Ich denke doch, dass das im VMware-Server 1 genauso funktioniert, wie in der VMware Workstation.