NSClient

What's Changed

Here I list all changes since 0.6.9 which is the previous release (there have been experiemental builds which includes below feature since then).

Os detection for check_os_version

This use the build number to detect OS versions above Windows 10 so if you want to check version you need to include build number in your check.

Enhancements and experimental support for Pdh based check_cpu.

This version has some PDH (Performance data Helpers) fixes and improved error handling and introduces an experimental new option to switch check_cpu to use PDH instead of APIs. This is experimental and intended to solve the issue with incorrect, negative or zero values on some machines with more than 12 cores. The main issue is that PDH is messy. It is localized and has historically been prone to strange issues and errors such as counter index getting corrupted and similar issues so lets ee how this works before making it the default.

To switch change the following configuration:

[/settings/system/windows]
use pdh for cpu=true

Check CPU load values now uses more standard keywords:

• idle
• user
• system

Old keywords are still retained for compatibility, so this is a non-breaking change.

Lua

The biggest new change here is the re-added Lua support. The Lua support has been changed a bit so it might not be 100% compatible with old scripts. As there is not much documentation for Lua scripting, I plan to add that soon. And doing that I will highlight the main differences.

> One thing still missing in Lua is protocol buffer support > This means you can only create "simple function" is returning code, string and performance data. But given the nature of Lua I think this is acceptable for the time being.

But in general "optional parameters" to functions are no longer optional. So for instance:

local reg = Registry()
reg:simple_function('lua_test', test_func_query)

local settings = Settings()
str = settings:get_string('/settings/lua/scripts', 'testar')

local core = Core()
code, msg, perf = core:simple_query('lua_test')

Will now require to be written as:

local reg = Registry()
reg:simple_function('lua_test', test_func_query, '')

local settings = Settings()
str = settings:get_string('/settings/lua/scripts', 'testar', '')

local core = Core()
code, msg, perf = core:simple_query('lua_test', {})

The other change is that construction object is now generally done with new where before it was done with various functions like Core() here however I have retained backwards compatibility so both should be possible.

But in general the quality of error handling and such is much better and I will as I said expand the documentation and add some more examples and such.

check_mk

As a side note experimental check_mk support was also added back. This is experimental in so far as I have only verified it with NSClient++ not actual check_mk so will need to look into that next. Also note that check_mk is experimental currently it only provides the version and agent name. If there is genuin interest this could easily be extended so please do let me know...

The way check_mk works is that the module only provides the communication layer and the data provided is provided by a Lua script (hence requiring Lua support). So the current script looks like so:

function server_process(packet)
    s = section.new()
    s:set_title("check_mk")
    s:add_line("Version: 0.0.1")
    s:add_line("Agent: nsclient++")
    s:add_line("AgentOS: Windows")
    packet:add_section(s)
end

reg = mk.new()
reg:server_callback(server_process)

So here we need to extend the packet to include more data and other sections for proper check_mk support.

Installer:

• Removed padded version numbers from installer (this caused issues with upgrade)
• Installer is now built with openssl presumably fixing remote config via https (have not verified this yet)
• Enabled WebUI by default in installer (open can still be used to disable)
• Added option to disable installing the service in installer

Security:

• Added option to configure ciphers in the web server (default is TLS 1.2 but now you can set 1.3 if you prefer)
• Default TLS (NRPE et al.) is now 1.2+ instead of only 1.2
• Improved some options and added docs for using NRPE with certificates and Nagios…
• Installer now installs the NRPE 2048 bit DH key

Other changes

• Fixed check_nscp_verison parsing new semantic version
• Added error messages for login failure via web browser
• Updated build instructions
• Fixed integer overflow in check_files.vbs script
• Fixed status in summary text not matching actual summary when no results were found in filters (see UNKNOWN: OK in this example)

  check_drivesize "filter=drive='foobar'"
  L        cli UNKNOWN: OK: No drives found
  L        cli  Performance data:

• Fixed numerous spelling and grammar issue in the documentation.
• Removed breakpad (replaced by restart watchdog and log files, but wont create and submit crash dumps (instead windows creates dumps which can be used))
• Bumped dependencies

Dependencies

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.15...0.7.0

What's Changed

Minor update with two fixes:

Os detection for check_os_version

This use the build number to detect OS versions above Windows 10 so if you want to check version you need to include build number in your check.

Improved experimental check_cpu with PDH counters.

It no longer use indexes instead English counter names which I hope will work better. Also now supports cores option to get CPU load per core.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.14...0.6.15

What's Changed

This version has some PDH (Performance data Helpers) fixes and improved error handling and introduces an experimental new option to switch check_cpu to use PDH instead of APIs. This is experimental and intended to solve the issue with incorrect and negative values on some machines with more than 12 cores. It currently does not support fetching loads per core (this will be added in a future update).

The main issue is that PDH is messy. It is localized and has historically been prone to strange issues and errors such as counter index getting corrupted and similar issues.

To switch change the following configuration:

[/settings/system/windows]
use pdh for cpu=true

This will then change so the check_cpu commands will use PDH counters instead.

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.13...0.6.14