Monitoring volatile service

When a service is defined as volatile, each time nagios found that the service is in hard non-OK state, nagios will:

• log the event
• send notification
• execute event handler

In other words, there is no need for hard state-change for these actions to fire.

With snmptt, log and report SNMP Traps received.

define service {
  ...
  service_description snmp-traps
  is_volatile  1
  max_check_attempts  1    
  active_checks_enabled	 0
  passive_checks_enabled  1		        
  normal_check_interval 1
  
  # set these only if the host has no other service checks:
  #freshness_threshold 86400
  #check_command   check-host-alive
  ...
}

A door sentry device will report CRITICAL status to nagios whenever it is opened, then nagios will run the trap-the-intruder command to capture the thief. As the service is volatile, every thief will be captured.

define service {
  ...
  service_description door-sentry
  is_volatile  1
  max_check_attempts  1
  active_checks_enabled	 0
  passive_checks_enabled  1		        
  event_handler trap-the-intruder
  ...
}