Setting Nagios Downtime from a script

I don't know why I've never done this until now.

Create a script "nagios_downtime" or whathaveyou:

#!/bin/bash

# check for usage
if [ $# -ne 4 ]
then
 echo "Usage: $0 <host> <service> <duration_in_sec> <message>"
 echo "Example: nagios_downtime web3 check_http 3600 'downtime reason'"
 echo "must run as nagios user"
 exit 1
fi

# snarf arguments
host=$1
svc=$2
dur=$3
message=$4

# calculate timestamps for now + duration
start=$(date +%s)
end=$((start + dur))

# initiate downtime
echo "[${start}] SCHEDULE_SVC_DOWNTIME;${host};${svc};${start};${end};1;0;0;nagiosadmin;${message}" > /var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd

# print saying you did it
echo "$(date): scheduling downtime for ${svc} on ${host} for ${dur} seconds"

then when you're taking an action (say a backup) and want to programmatically set downtime from within your backup script, just shell out to sudo -u nagios nagios_downtime db5 check_mysql_replication 600 'downtime for backup'

For more information look at the Nagios External Command documentation. Specifically, this script uses the command to schedule service downtime.

keywords: nagios service downtime command line

p.s. this is not a resilient script. It doesn't check any input. Don't run this behind xinetd and think you have an API for remotely setting downtime in nagios.