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1 <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V4.1//EN" >
2 <book>
3 <title>Nagios Plug-in Developer Guidelines</title>
5 <bookinfo>
6 <authorgroup>
7 <author>
8 <affiliation>
9 <orgname>Nagios Plugins Development Team</orgname>
10 </affiliation>
11 </author>
12 </authorgroup>
14 <pubdate>2006</pubdate>
15 <title>Nagios plug-in development guidelines</title>
17 <revhistory>
18 <revision>
19 <revnumber>$Revision$</revnumber>
20 <date>$Date$</date>
21 </revision>
22 </revhistory>
24 <copyright>
25 <year>2000 - 2006</year>
26 <holder>Nagios Plugins Development Team</holder>
27 </copyright>
29 </bookinfo>
32 <preface id="preface"><title>Preface</title>
33 <para>The purpose of this guidelines is to provide a reference for
34 the plug-in developers and encourage the standarization of the
35 different kind of plug-ins: C, shell, perl, python, etc.</para>
37 <para>Nagios Plug-in Development Guidelines Copyright (C) 2000-2006
38 (Nagios Plugins Team)</para>
40 <para>Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim
41 copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this
42 permission notice are preserved on all copies.</para>
44 <para>The plugins themselves are copyrighted by their respective
45 authors.</para>
46 </preface>
48 <article>
49 <section id="DevRequirements"><title>Development platform requirements</title>
50 <para>
51 Nagios plugins are developed to the GNU standard, so any OS which is supported by GNU
52 should run the plugins. While the requirements for compiling the Nagios plugins release
53 is very small, to develop from CVS needs additional software to be installed. These are the
54 minimum levels of software required:
56 <literallayout>
57 gnu make 3.79
58 automake 1.8.3
59 autoconf 2.58
60 </literallayout>
62 To compile from CVS, after you have checked out the code, run:
63 <literallayout>
64 tools/setup
65 ./configure
66 make
67 make install
68 </literallayout>
69 </para>
71 <para>Note: gettext is no longer a developer platform requirement. A lot of the files in lib/ and m4/
72 are synced with the coreutils project and we use the same levels of gettext that they
73 distribute.
74 </para>
75 <para>Note: gnu libtool, which must be at version 1.5.22 or above, has files installed into CVS, so is not
76 a development platform requirement.
77 </para>
78 </section>
80 <section id="PlugOutput"><title>Plugin Output for Nagios</title>
82 <para>You should always print something to STDOUT that tells if the
83 service is working or why it is failing. Try to keep the output short -
84 probably less that 80 characters. Remember that you ideally would like
85 the entire output to appear in a pager message, which will get chopped
86 off after a certain length.</para>
88 <section><title>Print only one line of text</title>
89 <para>Nagios will only grab the first line of text from STDOUT
90 when it notifies contacts about potential problems. If you print
91 multiple lines, you're out of luck. Remember, keep it short and
92 to the point.</para>
94 <para>Output should be in the format:</para>
95 <literallayout>
96 SERVICE STATUS: Information text
97 </literallayout>
98 <para>However, note that this is not a requirement of the API, so you cannot depend on this
99 being an accurate reflection of the status of the service - the status should always
100 be determined by the return code.</para>
101 </section>
103 <section><title>Verbose output</title>
104 <para>Use the -v flag for verbose output. You should allow multiple
105 -v options for additional verbosity, up to a maximum of 3. The standard
106 type of output should be:</para>
108 <table id="verboselevels"><title>Verbose output levels</title>
109 <tgroup cols="2">
110 <thead>
111 <row>
112 <entry><para>Verbosity level</para></entry>
113 <entry><para>Type of output</para></entry>
114 </row>
115 </thead>
116 <tbody>
117 <row>
118 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
119 <entry><para>Single line, minimal output. Summary</para></entry>
120 </row>
121 <row>
122 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
123 <entry><para>Single line, additional information (eg list processes that fail)</para></entry>
124 </row>
125 <row>
126 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
127 <entry><para>Multi line, configuration debug output (eg ps command used)</para></entry>
128 </row>
129 <row>
130 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
131 <entry><para>Lots of detail for plugin problem diagnosis</para></entry>
132 </row>
133 </tbody>
134 </tgroup>
135 </table>
136 </section>
138 <section><title>Screen Output</title>
139 <para>The plug-in should print the diagnostic and just the
140 synopsis part of the help message. A well written plugin would
141 then have --help as a way to get the verbose help.</para>
142 <para>Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
143 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
144 </section>
146 <section><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
147 <para>The return codes below are based on the POSIX spec of returning
148 a positive value. Netsaint prior to v0.0.7 supported non-POSIX
149 compliant return code of "-1" for unknown. Nagios supports POSIX return
150 codes by default.</para>
152 <para>Note: Some plugins will on occasion print on STDOUT that an error
153 occurred and error code is 138 or 255 or some such number. These
154 are usually caused by plugins using system commands and having not
155 enough checks to catch unexpected output. Developers should include a
156 default catch-all for system command output that returns an UNKNOWN
157 return code.</para>
159 <table id="ReturnCodes"><title>Plugin Return Codes</title>
160 <tgroup cols="3">
161 <thead>
162 <row>
163 <entry><para>Numeric Value</para></entry>
164 <entry><para>Service Status</para></entry>
165 <entry><para>Status Description</para></entry>
166 </row>
167 </thead>
168 <tbody>
169 <row>
170 <entry align="center"><para>0</para></entry>
171 <entry valign="middle"><para>OK</para></entry>
172 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service and it
173 appeared to be functioning properly</para></entry>
174 </row>
175 <row>
176 <entry align="center"><para>1</para></entry>
177 <entry valign="middle"><para>Warning</para></entry>
178 <entry><para>The plugin was able to check the service, but it
179 appeared to be above some "warning" threshold or did not appear
180 to be working properly</para></entry>
181 </row>
182 <row>
183 <entry align="center"><para>2</para></entry>
184 <entry valign="middle"><para>Critical</para></entry>
185 <entry><para>The plugin detected that either the service was not
186 running or it was above some "critical" threshold</para></entry>
187 </row>
188 <row>
189 <entry align="center"><para>3</para></entry>
190 <entry valign="middle"><para>Unknown</para></entry>
191 <entry><para>Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the
192 plugin or low-level failures internal to the plugin (such as unable to fork,
193 or open a tcp socket) that prevent it from performing the specified
194 operation. Higher-level errors (such as name resolution errors,
195 socket timeouts, etc) are outside of the control of plugins and should
196 generally NOT be reported as UNKNOWN states.
197 </para></entry>
198 </row>
199 </tbody>
200 </tgroup>
201 </table>
204 </section>
206 <section id="thresholdformat"><title>Threshold and ranges</title>
207 <para>A range is defined as a start and end point (inclusive) on a numeric scale (possibly
208 negative or positive infinity).
209 </para>
210 <para>A threshold is a range with an alert level (either warning or critical). Use the
211 set_thresholds(thresholds *, char *, char *) function to set the thresholds.
212 </para>
213 <para>The theory is that the plugin will do some sort of check which returns
214 back a numerical value, or metric, which is then compared to the warning and
215 critical thresholds. Use the get_status(double, thresholds *) function to
216 compare the value against the thresholds.</para>
217 <para>This is the generalised format for ranges:</para>
219 <literallayout>
220 [@]start:end
221 </literallayout>
223 <para>Notes:</para>
224 <orderedlist>
225 <listitem><para>start ≤ end</para>
226 </listitem>
227 <listitem><para>start and ":" is not required if start=0</para>
228 </listitem>
229 <listitem><para>if range is of format "start:" and end is not specified,
230 assume end is infinity</para>
231 </listitem>
232 <listitem><para>to specify negative infinity, use "~"</para>
233 </listitem>
234 <listitem><para>alert is raised if metric is outside start and end range
235 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
236 </listitem>
237 <listitem><para>if range starts with "@", then alert if inside this range
238 (inclusive of endpoints)</para>
239 </listitem>
240 </orderedlist>
242 <para>Note: Not all plugins are coded to expect ranges in this format yet.
243 There will be some work in providing multiple metrics.</para>
244 </section>
246 <section><title>Performance data</title>
247 <para>Performance data is defined by Nagios as "everything after the | of the plugin output" -
248 please refer to Nagios documentation for information on capturing this data to logfiles.
249 However, it is the responsibility of the plugin writer to ensure the
250 performance data is in a "Nagios plugins" format.
251 This is the expected format:</para>
253 <literallayout>
254 'label'=value[UOM];[warn];[crit];[min];[max]
255 </literallayout>
257 <para>Notes:</para>
258 <orderedlist>
259 <listitem><para>space separated list of label/value pairs</para>
260 </listitem>
261 <listitem><para>label can contain any characters</para>
262 </listitem>
263 <listitem><para>the single quotes for the label are optional. Required if
264 spaces, = or ' are in the label</para>
265 </listitem>
266 <listitem><para>label length is arbitrary, but ideally the first 19 characters
267 are unique (due to a limitation in RRD). Be aware of a limitation in the
268 amount of data that NRPE returns to Nagios</para>
269 </listitem>
270 <listitem><para>to specify a quote character, use two single quotes</para>
271 </listitem>
272 <listitem><para>warn, crit, min or max may be null (for example, if the threshold is
273 not defined or min and max do not apply). Trailing unfilled semicolons can be
274 dropped</para>
275 </listitem>
276 <listitem><para>min and max are not required if UOM=%</para>
277 </listitem>
278 <listitem><para>value, min and max in class [-0-9.]. Must all be the
279 same UOM</para>
280 </listitem>
281 <listitem><para>warn and crit are in the range format (see
282 <xref linkend="thresholdformat">). Must be the same UOM</para>
283 </listitem>
284 <listitem><para>UOM (unit of measurement) is one of:</para>
285 <orderedlist>
286 <listitem><para>no unit specified - assume a number (int or float)
287 of things (eg, users, processes, load averages)</para>
288 </listitem>
289 <listitem><para>s - seconds (also us, ms)</para></listitem>
290 <listitem><para>% - percentage</para></listitem>
291 <listitem><para>B - bytes (also KB, MB, TB)</para></listitem>
292 <listitem><para>c - a continous counter (such as bytes
293 transmitted on an interface)</para></listitem>
294 </orderedlist>
295 </listitem>
296 </orderedlist>
298 <para>It is up to third party programs to convert the Nagios plugins
299 performance data into graphs.</para>
300 </section>
302 <section><title>Translations</title>
303 <para>If possible, use translation tools for all output to respect the user's language
304 settings. See <xref linkend="translationsdevelopers"> for guidelines
305 for the core plugins.
306 </para>
307 </section>
308 </section>
310 <section id="SysCmdAuxFiles"><title>System Commands and Auxiliary Files</title>
312 <section><title>Don't execute system commands without specifying their
313 full path</title>
314 <para>Don't use exec(), popen(), etc. to execute external
315 commands without explicity using the full path of the external
316 program.</para>
318 <para>Doing otherwise makes the plugin vulnerable to hijacking
319 by a trojan horse earlier in the search path. See the main
320 plugin distribution for examples on how this is done.</para>
321 </section>
323 <section><title>Use spopen() if external commands must be executed</title>
325 <para>If you have to execute external commands from within your
326 plugin and you're writing it in C, use the spopen() function
327 that Karl DeBisschop has written.</para>
329 <para>The code for spopen() and spclose() is included with the
330 core plugin distribution.</para>
331 </section>
333 <section><title>Don't make temp files unless absolutely required</title>
335 <para>If temp files are needed, make sure that the plugin will
336 fail cleanly if the file can't be written (e.g., too few file
337 handles, out of disk space, incorrect permissions, etc.) and
338 delete the temp file when processing is complete.</para>
339 </section>
341 <section><title>Don't be tricked into following symlinks</title>
343 <para>If your plugin opens any files, take steps to ensure that
344 you are not following a symlink to another location on the
345 system.</para>
346 </section>
348 <section><title>Validate all input</title>
350 <para>use routines in utils.c or utils.pm and write more as needed</para>
351 </section>
353 </section>
358 <section id="PerlPlugin"><title>Perl Plugins</title>
360 <para>Perl plugins are coded a little more defensively than other
361 plugins because of embedded Perl. When configured as such, embedded
362 Perl Nagios (ePN) requires stricter use of the some of Perl's features.
363 This section outlines some of the steps needed to use ePN
364 effectively.</para>
366 <orderedlist>
368 <listitem><para> Do not use BEGIN and END blocks since they will be called
369 only once (when Nagios starts and shuts down) with Embedded Perl (ePN). In
370 particular, do not use BEGIN blocks to initialize variables.</para>
371 </listitem>
373 <listitem><para>To use utils.pm, you need to provide a full path to the
374 module in order for it to work.</para>
376 <literallayout>
377 e.g.
378 use lib "/usr/local/nagios/libexec";
379 use utils qw(...);
380 </literallayout>
381 </listitem>
383 <listitem><para>Perl scripts should be called with "-w"</para>
384 </listitem>
386 <listitem><para>All Perl plugins must compile cleanly under "use strict" - i.e. at
387 least explicitly package names as in "$main::x" or predeclare every
388 variable. </para>
391 <para>Explicitly initialize each variable in use. Otherwise with
392 caching enabled, the plugin will not be recompiled each time, and
393 therefore Perl will not reinitialize all the variables. All old
394 variable values will still be in effect.</para>
395 </listitem>
397 <listitem><para>Do not use >DATA< handles (these simply do not compile under ePN).</para>
398 </listitem>
400 <listitem><para>Do not use global variables in named subroutines. This is bad practise anyway, but with ePN the
401 compiler will report an error "<global_var> will not stay shared ..". Values used by
402 subroutines should be passed in the argument list.</para>
403 </listitem>
405 <listitem><para>If writing to a file (perhaps recording
406 performance data) explicitly close close it. The plugin never
407 calls <emphasis role="strong">exit</emphasis>; that is caught by
408 p1.pl, so output streams are never closed.</para>
409 </listitem>
411 <listitem><para>As in <xref linkend="runtime"> all plugins need
412 to monitor their runtime, specially if they are using network
413 resources. Use of the <emphasis>alarm</emphasis> is recommended
414 noting that some Perl modules (eg LWP) manage timers, so that an alarm
415 set by a plugin using such a module is overwritten by the module.
416 (workarounds are cunning (TM) or using the module timer)
417 Plugins may import a default time out ($TIMEOUT) from utils.pm.
418 </para>
419 </listitem>
421 <listitem><para>Perl plugins should import %ERRORS from utils.pm
422 and then "exit $ERRORS{'OK'}" rather than "exit 0"
423 </para>
424 </listitem>
426 </orderedlist>
428 </section>
430 <section id="runtime"><title>Runtime Timeouts</title>
432 <para>Plugins have a very limited runtime - typically 10 sec.
433 As a result, it is very important for plugins to maintain internal
434 code to exit if runtime exceeds a threshold. </para>
436 <para>All plugins should timeout gracefully, not just networking
437 plugins. For instance, df may lock if you have automounted
438 drives and your network fails - but on first glance, who'd think
439 df could lock up like that. Plus, it should just be more error
440 resistant to be able to time out rather than consume
441 resources.</para>
443 <section><title>Use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT</title>
445 <para>All network plugins should use DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT to timeout</para>
447 </section>
450 <section><title>Add alarms to network plugins</title>
452 <para>If you write a plugin which communicates with another
453 networked host, you should make sure to set an alarm() in your
454 code that prevents the plugin from hanging due to abnormal
455 socket closures, etc. Nagios takes steps to protect itself
456 against unruly plugins that timeout, but any plugins you create
457 should be well behaved on their own.</para>
459 </section>
463 </section>
465 <section id="PlugOptions"><title>Plugin Options</title>
467 <para>A well written plugin should have --help as a way to get
468 verbose help. Code and output should try to respect the 80x25 size of a
469 crt (remember when fixing stuff in the server room!)</para>
471 <section><title>Option Processing</title>
473 <para>For plugins written in C, we recommend the C standard
474 getopt library for short options. Getopt_long is always available.
475 </para>
477 <para>For plugins written in Perl, we recommend Getopt::Long module.</para>
479 <para>Positional arguments are strongly discouraged.</para>
481 <para>There are a few reserved options that should not be used
482 for other purposes:</para>
484 <literallayout>
485 -V version (--version)
486 -h help (--help)
487 -t timeout (--timeout)
488 -w warning threshold (--warning)
489 -c critical threshold (--critical)
490 -H hostname (--hostname)
491 -v verbose (--verbose)
492 </literallayout>
494 <para>In addition to the reserved options above, some other standard options are:</para>
496 <literallayout>
497 -C SNMP community (--community)
498 -a authentication password (--authentication)
499 -l login name (--logname)
500 -p port or password (--port or --passwd/--password)monitors operational
501 -u url or username (--url or --username)
502 </literallayout>
504 <para>Look at check_pgsql and check_procs to see how I currently
505 think this can work. Standard options are:</para>
508 <para>The option -V or --version should be present in all
509 plugins. For C plugins it should result in a call to print_revision, a
510 function in utils.c which takes two character arguments, the
511 command name and the plugin revision.</para>
513 <para>The -? option, or any other unparsable set of options,
514 should print out a short usage statement. Character width should
515 be 80 and less and no more that 23 lines should be printed (it
516 should display cleanly on a dumb terminal in a server
517 room).</para>
519 <para>The option -h or --help should be present in all plugins.
520 In C plugins, it should result in a call to print_help (or
521 equivalent). The function print_help should call print_revision,
522 then print_usage, then should provide detailed
523 help. Help text should fit on an 80-character width display, but
524 may run as many lines as needed.</para>
526 <para>The option -v or --verbose should be present in all plugins.
527 The user should be allowed to specify -v multiple times to increase
528 the verbosity level, as described in <xref linkend="verboselevels">.</para>
529 </section>
531 <section>
532 <title>Plugins with more than one type of threshold, or with
533 threshold ranges</title>
535 <para>Old style was to do things like -ct for critical time and
536 -cv for critical value. That goes out the window with POSIX
537 getopt. The allowable alternatives are:</para>
539 <orderedlist>
540 <listitem>
541 <para>long options like -critical-time (or -ct and -cv, I
542 suppose).</para>
543 </listitem>
545 <listitem>
546 <para>repeated options like `check_load -w 10 -w 6 -w 4 -c
547 16 -c 10 -c 10`</para>
548 </listitem>
550 <listitem>
551 <para>for brevity, the above can be expressed as `check_load
552 -w 10,6,4 -c 16,10,10`</para>
553 </listitem>
555 <listitem>
556 <para>ranges are expressed with colons as in `check_procs -C
557 httpd -w 1:20 -c 1:30` which will warn above 20 instances,
558 and critical at 0 and above 30</para>
559 </listitem>
561 <listitem>
562 <para>lists are expressed with commas, so Jacob's check_nmap
563 uses constructs like '-p 1000,1010,1050:1060,2000'</para>
564 </listitem>
566 <listitem>
567 <para>If possible when writing lists, use tokens to make the
568 list easy to remember and non-order dependent - so
569 check_disk uses '-c 10000,10%' so that it is clear which is
570 the precentage and which is the KB values (note that due to
571 my own lack of foresight, that used to be '-c 10000:10%' but
572 such constructs should all be changed for consistency,
573 though providing reverse compatibility is fairly
574 easy).</para>
575 </listitem>
577 </orderedlist>
579 <para>As always, comments are welcome - making this consistent
580 without a host of long options was quite a hassle, and I would
581 suspect that there are flaws in this strategy.
582 </para>
583 </section>
584 </section>
586 <section id="Testcases"><title>Test cases</title>
587 <para>
588 Tests are the best way of knowing if the plugins work as expected. Please
589 create and update test cases where possible.
590 </para>
592 <para>
593 To run a test, from the top level directory, run "make test". This will run
594 all the current tests and report an overall success rate.
595 </para>
597 <para>
598 See the <ulink url="http://tinderbox.altinity.org">Nagios Plugins Tinderbox server</ulink>
599 for the daily test results.
600 </para>
602 <section><title>Test cases for plugins</title>
603 <para>These use perl's Test::More. To do a one time test, run "cd plugins && perl t/check_disk.t".
604 </para>
606 <para>There will somtimes be failures seen in this output which are known failures that
607 need to be fixed. As long as the return code is 0, it will be reported as "test pass".
608 (If you have a fix so that the specific test passes, that will be gratefully received!)
609 </para>
611 <para>
612 If you want a summary test, run: "cd plugins && prove t/check_disk.t".
613 This runs the test in a summary format.
614 </para>
616 <para>
617 For a good and amusing tutorial on using Test::More, see this
618 <ulink url="http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Test-Simple-0.62/lib/Test/Tutorial.pod">
619 link</ulink>
620 </para>
622 </section>
624 <section><title>Testing the C library functions</title>
625 <para>
626 We use <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/LibTap">the libtap library</ulink>, which gives
627 perl's TAP
628 (Test Anything Protocol) output. This is used by the FreeBSD team for their regression testing.
629 </para>
631 <para>
632 To run tests using the libtap library, download the latest tar ball and extract.
633 There is a problem with tap-1.01 where
634 <ulink url="http://jc.ngo.org.uk/trac-bin/trac.cgi/ticket/25">pthread support doesn't appear to work</ulink>
635 properly on non-FreeBSD systems. Install with 'CPPFLAGS="-UHAVE_LIBPTHREAD" ./configure && make && make check && make install'.
636 </para>
638 <para>
639 When you run Nagios Plugins' configure, it will look for the tap library and will automatically
640 setup the tests. Run "make test" to run all the tests.
641 </para>
642 </section>
644 </section>
645 <section id="CodingGuidelines"><title>Coding guidelines</title>
646 <para>See <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards_toc.html">GNU
647 Coding standards</ulink> for general guidelines.</para>
648 <section><title>C coding</title>
650 <para>Variables should be declared at the beginning of code blocks and
651 not inline because of portability with older compilers.</para>
653 <para>You should use /* */ for comments and not // as some compilers
654 do not handle the latter form.</para>
655 </section>
657 <section><title>Crediting sources</title>
658 <para>If you have copied a routine from another source, make sure the licence
659 from your source allows this. Add a comment referencing the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
660 file, where you can put more detail about the source.</para>
661 <para>For contributed code, do not add any named credits in the source code
662 - contributors should be added into the THANKS.in file instead.
663 </para>
664 </section>
666 <section><title>CVS comments</title>
667 <para>When adding CVS comments at commit time, you can use the following prefixes:
668 <variablelist>
669 <varlistentry><term>- comment</term>
670 <listitem>
671 <para>for a comment that can be removed from the Changelog</para>
672 </listitem>
673 </varlistentry>
674 <varlistentry><term>* comment</term>
675 <listitem>
676 <para>for an important amendment to be included into a features list</para>
677 </listitem>
678 </varlistentry>
679 </variablelist>
680 </para>
681 <para>If the change is due to a contribution, please quote the contributor's name
682 and, if applicable, add the SourceForge Tracker number. Don't forget to
683 update the THANKS.in file.</para>
684 </section>
686 <section id="translationsdevelopers"><title>Translations for developers</title>
687 <para>To make the job easier for translators, please follow these guidelines:</para>
688 <orderedlist>
689 <listitem><para>
690 Before creating new strings, check the po/nagios-plugins.pot file to
691 see if a similar string
692 already exists
693 </para></listitem>
694 <listitem><para>
695 For help texts, break into individual options so that these can be reused
696 between plugins
697 </para></listitem>
698 <listitem><para>Try to avoid linefeeds unless you are working on a block of text</para></listitem>
699 <listitem><para>Short help is not translated</para></listitem>
700 <listitem><para>Long help has options in English language, but text translated</para></listitem>
701 <listitem><para>"Copyright" kept in English</para></listitem>
702 <listitem><para>Copyright holder names kept in original text</para></listitem>
703 <listitem><para>Debugging output does not need to be translated</para></listitem>
704 </orderedlist>
705 </section>
707 <section><title>Translations for translators</title>
708 <para>To create an up to date list of translatable strings, run: tools/gen_locale.sh</para>
709 </section>
711 </section>
713 <section id="SubmittingChanges"><title>Submission of new plugins and patches</title>
715 <section id="Patches"><title>Patches</title>
716 <para>If you have a bug patch, please supply a unified or context diff against the
717 version you are using. For new features, please supply a diff against
718 the CVS HEAD version.</para>
720 <para>Patches should be submitted via
721 <ulink url="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=29880&atid=397599">SourceForge's
722 tracker system for Nagiosplug patches</ulink>
723 and be announced to the nagiosplug-devel mailing list.</para>
725 <para>Submission of a patch implies that the submmitter acknowledges that they
726 are the author of the code (or have permission from the author to release the code)
727 and agree that the code can be released under the GPL. The copyright for the changes will
728 then revert to the Nagios Plugin Development Team - this is required so that any copyright
729 infringements can be investigated quickly without contacting a huge list of copyright holders.
730 Credit will always be given for any patches through a THANKS file in the distribution.</para>
731 </section>
733 <section id="Newplugins"><title>New plugins</title>
735 <para>If you would like others to use your plugins, please add it to
736 the official 3rd party plugin repository,
737 <ulink url="http://www.nagiosexchange.org">NagiosExchange</ulink>.
738 </para>
740 <para>We are not accepting requests for inclusion of plugins into
741 our distribution at the moment, but when we do, these are the minimum
742 requirements:
743 </para>
745 <orderedlist>
746 <listitem>
747 <para>Include copyright and license information in all files</para>
748 </listitem>
749 <listitem>
750 <para>The standard command options are supported (--help, --version,
751 --timeout, --warning, --critical)</para>
752 </listitem>
753 <listitem>
754 <para>It is determined to be not redundant (for instance, we would not
755 add a new version of check_disk just because someone had provide
756 a plugin that had perf checking - we would incorporate the features
757 into an exisiting plugin)</para>
758 </listitem>
759 <listitem>
760 <para>One of the developers has had the time to audit the code and declare
761 it ready for core</para>
762 </listitem>
763 <listitem>
764 <para>It should also follow code format guidelines, and use functions from
765 utils (perl or c or sh) rather than using its own</para>
766 </listitem>
767 <listitem>
768 <para>Includes patches to configure.in if required (via the EXTRAS list if
769 it will only work on some platforms)</para>
770 </listitem>
771 <listitem>
772 <para>If possible, please submit a test harness. Documentation on sample
773 tests coming soon</para>
774 </listitem>
775 </orderedlist>
777 </section>
779 </section>
780 </article>
782 </book>