# Checking the installation

If everything went well until now you can try to call PNP using your web browser. When using the installation with default values PNP should be called using http://<server name>/pnp4nagios/. The first time you will see a page “PNP4Nagios Environment Tests” which includes different checks of necessary components. Obviously all checks have to be passed successfully before you can proceed. Please follow the instructions given on that page.

If all tests have passed *successfully* the file pnp4nagios/share/install.php can be deleted or renamed. Not till then the web interface is reachable.

Alternatively you can create a file called `pnp4nagios/share/install.ignore` which will prevent the call of the installer after further updates.

If you receive the message “PHP magic_quotes_gpc is deprecated” then please locate your `php.ini` and set the value to `Off`.

Called without any arguments PNP looks for RRD and XML files in pnp4nagios/var/perfdata and shows all graphs of the first host.

ATTENTION: Immediately after (re-)starting Nagios after you enabled the processing of performance data you will get error messages in your browser because performance data has to be collected and stored in RRD files. Depending on the check interval you are using you have to wait some time before you can view the first graphs.

## Debug Logfile

Calling `make install-config` during installation will create a sample config file `etc/process_perfdata.cfg-sample`. The values in the sample file will correspond to the defaults used by `process_perfdata.pl` so normally you do not have a file called `process_perfdata.cfg` while running the procedure.
However you can influence the way `process_perfdata.pl` works by changing options which have to be specified in `process_perfdata.cfg`.

The most important options launching PNP are LOG_LEVEL and LOG_FILE. We recommend setting the `LOG_LEVEL` value to “2” so you can track what process_perfdata.pl will do. Most likely we will ask for excerpts from perfdata.log if you open a support request on the mailing lists as well as the output of the verify_pnp_config script so please provide them .

During normal operation the debug level should be set to 0 to avoid performance issues due to unnecessary entries in the log file.

## Something went wrong

Some basic settings should be checked

1. Have any RRD and XML files been created? `process_perfdata.pl` will create a new directory under pnp/perfdata for every host. In this directory an RRD database and an XML file will be created for every service. The host data will be stored in `_HOST_.xml` and `_HOST_.rrd` respectively.
If graphing stops out of a sudden then open the appropriate XML file. There are two tags called <RC> and <TXT>. <RC> shows the return code of the RRDtool update and <TXT> a textual description.
Sometimes you have to specify additional options so that performance data is produced. In some cases a wrapper script might help.
However not all checks provide performance data. That applies - among others - to “check_ping” in contrast to “check_icmp” which does provide data (starting with Nagios plugin version 1.4.12 check_ping does provide performance data).
Using the web interface the detail information of hosts/services shows a field “Performance Data”. If it is empty there is no data available so no files are written to the appropriate directory and that is why PNP does not provide you with graphs!
The following image shows the information of a “PING” service. The output of the plugin is surrounded by a blue border, the performance data by a red one.

2. Has nagios called `process_perfdata.pl`? In the config file for process_perfdata.pl (`etc/process_perfdata.cfg`) you can increase the debug level. Data processing will be logged in `var/perfdata.log`.

3. Graphs are shown without text? Have a look at the requirements.

4. Some graphs are shown, others report the error `“parser error: Input is not proper UTF-8”` or something similar. Please check if your data contains “special” characters not present in the ASCII set. Try to set XML_ENC in `process_perfdata.cfg` to `ISO-8859-1` or something appropriate. Wait until the xml file is newly created and retry.

5. Using the npcdmod module the value of the nagios.cfg directive `event_broker_options` may have to be adapted if it was modified. You'll find some details here.

6. You can use the script verify_pnp_config.pl after installation to check your settings and if performance data is present.

7. Things look OK, but some files are being left in the spool directory (/usr/local/pnp4nagios/var/spool/<perfdata_filename>-PID-<process_perfdata_pid>). If process_perdata.pl is not able to write to the destination directory (/usr/local/pnp4nagios/share/perfdata/<host>), it will stop and not remove the file. That will increase the size of the spool directory and slow down performance data processing. This problem is likely to occur if you have copied directories from a previous installation and/or manually created directories and left them with wrong permissions or wrong ownership.

back to contents | verify_pnp_config.pl