nagios – check_ping CRITICAL – You need more args!!! Could not open pipe:

I’ve been moving some services around lately. A server is dying and I need to move stuff off it. Today I managed to move Bacula and Nagios onto a new server. After a short bit of struggle, I had just one service check that was failing: check_ping.

Here’s the example:

$ /usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_ping -H bast.example.org -w 3000.0,80% -c 5000.0,100% -p 1      
CRITICAL - You need more args!!!
Could not open pipe: 

Google searches did not help.

So I tried ping from the command line… and as I was typing it… I realized: I’m in a jail.

Solution: well documented in many places. Enable raw sockets in jails. Recompile nagios-plugsins with jail support. Restart the jails.

Summary: add this to /etc/sysctl.conf:

security.jail.allow_raw_sockets=1

Issue this command:

# sysctl security.jail.allow_raw_sockets=1
security.jail.allow_raw_sockets: 0 -> 1

Add the jail support to the plugins:

cd /usr/ports/net-mgmt/nagios-plugins
make config

Make sure you have this option checked:

[x] JAIL     Compilation within jail(8) (see Makefile) 

Then rebuild the plugings:

portupgrade -f nagios-plugins

Then restart your jails.