The Multiadmin Tool

The Multiadmin tool

Since version 1.0.38, Check_mk provides an own small web application. That application currently provides only one function: the Multiadmin Tool. It allows you to first search for a set of services by defining a search filter, and in a second step to perform the most important Nagios operations on all of these services, for example:

• Enabling and disabling active checks
• Enabling and disabling notifications
• Acknowledging service problems
• Scheduling downtimes

The main advantage over the standard Nagios web pages - which also allow these operations and many more - is the fact, that you can do them on a large set of services at once - even if the services are not grouped by Nagios via a service group or a host.

Setup & Authentication

The Multiadmin tool is automatically installed and setup when you install Check_mk. It also creates a configuration file for Apache. When it does this, it tries to autodetect your Apache configuration for Nagios and use the same settings for authentication. This way you should be able to log into Check_mk's web pages with the same user, password and authentication name as into Nagios itself. Please edit the Apache configuration if you do not like this. You might want to change the line

    require valid-user

into

    require user nagiosadmin

Check_mk will never overwrite this file once it has created it.

When using HTTP authentication, you are able to restrict read or write access to the Multiadmin tool via the two variables multiadmin_users and multiadmin_action_users in main.mk. These are lists of user names. If they are not defined in main.mk, then access restriction is turned off and everybody has full access to all functionality.

multiadmin_users        = [ "meier", "mueller", "huber" ]
multiadmin_action_users = [ "huber" ]

Please also note, that Check_mk needs mod_python. This is prepackaged on most Linux distributions. On Debian/Ubuntu you need to install the package libapache2-mod-python. On SuSE LINUX that package is named apache2-mod_python. Other distros name that package simply mod_python or might have yet other names.

After installing Check_mk (and probably installing mod_python) you need to restart Apache. The default URL for Check_mk's web pages is /check_mk/.

The URL of the Multiadmin tool is /check_mk/filter.py. That page is designed to be embedded into the classical Nagios frame set. The easiest way is to add a link to it in Nagios' side.html or side.php.

Screenshots

The filter form allows you to specify search criteria for services:

Klicking on the tab "Results" show all matching services:

The tab "Actions" also shows the results but in addition a form for choosing an operating to perform on all matching services:

Playing Sounds on Results Page

NEW in 1.1.3 It is possible to configure the Results page of Multiadmin to play sounds depending on the worst state listed in the current view.

Playing sounds on each time opening or refreshing the result page can be enabled by adding the multiadmin_sounds option to the main.mk.

multiadmin_sounds = {
  "host"     : "/nagios/media/explosion.wav", # host down or unreachable
  "critical" : "/nagios/media/arrow.wav",
  "warning"  : "/nagios/media/crawler.wav",
  # "unknown"  : "/nagios/media/door.wav",
  "ok"       : "/nagios/media/tiktak.wav",
  "idle"     : "/nagios/media/tiktak.wav",
}

The order of the states is down/unreachable -> critical -> unknown -> warning.

Each state level can have a different sound. The sound file needs to be in wav format and readable by the webserver. In the above example the files are located in the media subfolder of the share directory of Nagios.

To disable the sound of one state simply uncomment or remove the definition for that state like it is done above for the unknown state. If one type has no sound defined in multiadmin_sounds, then no sound is played for that state. Instead of it the sound for the next lower state is being played.

Using Nagios contacts for authorization

NEW in 1.1.3 The configuration options multiadmin_users and multiadmin_action_users just restrict who may use Multiadmin but does not take into account which data is being displayed. As of version 1.1.3, you can tell Multiadmin to honor the hosts and service contacts of Nagios in order to control which services are being displayed and allowed to do actions for.

This behavior is turned on by two variables in main.mk:

# Show only services the user logged in is a contact for
multiadmin_restrict =  True

# Allow only actions on services the user logged in
# is a contact for
multiadmin_restrict_actions = True

The default value for both settings is False. If multiadmin_restrict is set to True, the setting of multiadmin_restrict_actions will also be forced to True, since it does not make sense to allow actions on objects a user cannot see.

Just as in Nagios' cgi.cfg it is also possible to define administrative users having all permissions, even if they are not contacts in Nagios of the objects in question. This is controlled by two variables - for viewing and acting:

# Allow nagiosadmin and guest to see all services
multiadmin_unrestricted_users = [ "nagiosadmin", "guest" ]

# Allow nagiosadmin to do all actions on all services
multiadmin_unrestricted_action_users = [ "nagiosadmin" ]