[chef] Nagios cookbook requires non-standard attributes within the "users" data bag for admins?

[Brad Knowles < >]

Folks,

This is another one where I had opened a discussion on this subject at 
help.opscode.com, and where I am now moving this thread to this list instead.


Anyway, I have been following as best I can the Nagios quick start tutorial 
(seeing as I'm on CentOS 5.6 and not Ubuntu, this means there's a lot of 
stuff I have to do differently), and it seems that the file 
nagios/templates/default/contacts.cfg.erb requires some non-standard 
attributes to be defined for the admins (I added line numbers to make it 
easier to see what error was happening where):

 25 <% @admins.each do |a| -%>
 26 define contact {
 27   use          default-contact
 28   contact_name <%= a['id'] %>
 29   email        <%= a['nagios']['email'] %>
 30 }

However, in the "users" data bag, the attribute ['nagios']['email'] is not 
defined for any of our admins. So, this value is nil, and we get this error 
when trying to install this cookbook:

[Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:52:14 +0000] INFO: Processing 
template[/etc/nagios3/conf.d/contacts.cfg] action create (nagios::server line 
28)
[Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:52:14 +0000] ERROR: 
template[/etc/nagios3/conf.d/contacts.cfg] (nagios::server line 28) has had 
an error
[Thu, 22 Sep 2011 17:52:14 +0000] ERROR: 
template[/etc/nagios3/conf.d/contacts.cfg] 
(/var/chef/cache/cookbooks/nagios/definitions/nagios_conf.rb:28:in `block in 
from_file') had an error:
Chef::Mixin::Template::TemplateError (undefined method `[]' for nil:NilClass) 
on line #29:

 27:   use          default-contact
 28:   contact_name <%= a['id'] %>
 29:   email        <%= a['nagios']['email'] %>
 30: }
 31:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is this template assuming that all admins should 
get all nagios notices sent by e-mail? What if we have several admins defined 
on the machine but who should not get the notices?

Assuming I'm correct, then shouldn't you test a['nagios']['email'] != nil 
before you try to use it in an assignment on line 29, and if it is nil then 
skip over this particular admin?


Unfortunately, this issue is preventing me from installing the Nagios 
cookbook from the Opscode repository.  I'm now moving on to try the icinga 
cookbook, to see if that works any better.

Any and all advice or suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks!

-- 
Brad Knowles 
<
 >
SAGE Level IV, Chef Level 0.0.1