How to install the Nagios plugins on Debian 10?

In this post, I will show you how to install the Nagios Plugins on Debian 10.

Nagios is perhaps the most complete solution for network and equipment monitoring on Linux. It has everything you need to do the job properly. However, once it is installed it lacks the plugins that give the application real utility.

With these plugins, you will be able to monitor many events in the server as well as in the rest of the computers in the network.

So let’s go for it.

1) Install Nagios on Debian 10

Obviously, the first step is to install Nagios on Debian 10. In addition, some packages have to be installed for the compilation of other packages.

So you can read our post about Nagios on Debian 10.

How to install Nagios on Debian 10?

Then, after the installation, we can continue.

2) Installing the Nagios plugins on Debian 10

Now we have to download the source code. To do this we will use the wget command.

Navigate to the /tmp/ folder and from there download the file.

:~$ cd /tmp/
:~$ wget -c https://nagios-plugins.org/download/nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz

--2020-01-31 07:25:23--  https://nagios-plugins.org/download/nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz
Resolving nagios-plugins.org (nagios-plugins.org)... 72.14.186.43
Connecting to nagios-plugins.org (nagios-plugins.org)|72.14.186.43|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 2833267 (2.7M) [application/x-gzip]
Saving to: 'nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz'

nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz                100%[=====================================================================================>]   2.70M   714KB/s    in 4.9s    

2020-01-31 07:25:30 (569 KB/s) - 'nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz' saved [2833267/2833267]

At the time of writing this post, the latest version of the Nagios plugins is 2.3.1. So to get the latest version, first check what it is and replace the version number.

When the download is complete, decompress the downloaded file.

:~$ tar xzf nagios-plugins-2.3.1.tar.gz

Now navigate to the generated folder and prepare to compile the package.

:~$ ./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating gl/Makefile
config.status: creating nagios-plugins.spec
config.status: creating tools/build_perl_modules
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating tap/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/Makefile
config.status: creating plugins/Makefile
config.status: creating lib/tests/Makefile
config.status: creating plugins-root/Makefile
config.status: creating plugins-scripts/Makefile
config.status: creating plugins-scripts/utils.pm
config.status: creating plugins-scripts/utils.sh
config.status: creating perlmods/Makefile
config.status: creating test.pl
config.status: creating pkg/solaris/pkginfo
config.status: creating po/Makefile.in
config.status: creating config.h
config.status: config.h is unchanged
config.status: executing depfiles commands
config.status: executing libtool commands
config.status: executing po-directories commands
config.status: creating po/POTFILES
config.status: creating po/Makefile

Now use the make command to create the package.

:~$ make

Then, perform the installation with the following command:

:~$ sudo make install
ck_ifoperstatus check_mailq check_file_age check_ssl_validity utils.sh utils.pm '/usr/local/nagios/libexec'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-data-am'.
make[2]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-scripts'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-scripts'
Making install in plugins-root
make[1]: Entering directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-root'
make[2]: Entering directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-root'
 /usr/bin/install -c -o nagios -g nagios check_dhcp /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_dhcp
 chown root /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_dhcp
 chmod ug=rx,u+s /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_dhcp
 /usr/bin/install -c -o nagios -g nagios check_icmp /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_icmp
 chown root /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_icmp
 chmod ug=rx,u+s /usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_icmp
make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-data-am'.
make[2]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-root'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/plugins-root'
Making install in po
make[1]: Entering directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/po'
/usr/bin/mkdir -p /usr/local/nagios/share
installing fr.gmo as /usr/local/nagios/share/locale/fr/LC_MESSAGES/nagios-plugins.mo
installing de.gmo as /usr/local/nagios/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES/nagios-plugins.mo
if test "nagios-plugins" = "gettext-tools"; then \
  /usr/bin/mkdir -p /usr/local/nagios/share/gettext/po; \
  for file in Makefile.in.in remove-potcdate.sin    Makevars.template; do \
    /usr/bin/install -c -o nagios -g nagios -m 644 ./$file \
		    /usr/local/nagios/share/gettext/po/$file; \
  done; \
  for file in Makevars; do \
    rm -f /usr/local/nagios/share/gettext/po/$file; \
  done; \
else \
  : ; \
fi
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1/po'
make[1]: Entering directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1'
make[2]: Entering directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1'
make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-exec-am'.
make[2]: Nothing to be done for 'install-data-am'.
make[2]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/nagios-plugins-2.3.1'

At this point, everything should have gone smoothly. The plugins are installed in the /usr/local/nagios/libexec/ folder so use the ls command to check if they were installed.

:~$ ls /usr/local/nagios/libexec/

As you can see in the image, they were installed correctly.

Now restart the Nagios service to load the plugins.

:~$ sudo systemctl restart nagios

Now let’s see the results.

3) Nagios plugins working

After restarting the Nagios service, open your web browser and log in to Nagios with your username and password.

Now in the Hosts section, you will see the localhost information.

Also the information about the services, then, the plugins were loaded correctly.

And that is it.

Conclusion

This tutorial is an add-on for you to have fully functional Nagios on your Linux server. Now you have learned how to install the plugins of this tool.

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