NSClient

What's Changed

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.

Other Changes

• Fix typo in documentation by @Napsty in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/903
• Marked Dotnet and modules as deprecated in documentation.
• Reformatted all code by @mickem in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/917

Status

With this change most features should now be back (apart from dotnet which is deprecated) the only things remaining are:

• Protocol buffer support for Lua.
• CheckPowerShell: A module adding native power-shell support to NSClient++ (this will likely be re-implemented in the future with Rust)
• CheckDocker: This needs to be looked into (not sure of the status)

That said there are some dependencies which needs to be updated and managed a bit better still but that will happen in parallell while adding support for modern Windows.

Dependencies

• Python: 3.11
• Open ssl: 1.1.1w
• Protocol buffers: 21.12
• Boost: 1.82.0
• CryptoPP: 8.8.0
• Lua: 5.4.7
• Mongoose: ?
• json-spirit: ? (Will be replaced by native support in boost)
• miniz: ?
• tinyxml: ?

New Contributors

• @Napsty made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/903

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.11...0.6.12

What's Changed

This is a "pre release" meaning I want some feedback on some of the changes. So as long as you read and understand the change-log there should not be any functional issues installing this in a production setting if you want.

Bug Fixes

• 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:

• Added new option fetch core loads to allow using another API to fetch CPU load. This might fix the "incorrect CPU load on machines with many cores)

  [/settings/system/windows]
  fetch core loads = false

  This will be further improved in coming version but please do let me know if this improves the situation.

Documentation

Merged a series of PR:s fixing grammar and spelling mistakes in the code and documentation.

• Fixed numerous spelling and grammar issue in the documentation.
• Fixed exit code description in docs
• Added docs about loading modules to docs

Maintenance

Started to automatically re-format the code some sections require gated excludes so this will take a while so will do it part by part.

• Reformatted part of the code base

New Contributors

• @simon04 made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/673
• @harloprillar made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/735
• @wopfel made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/620
• @mlalibs made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/769
• @EconomicTouristsArmLate made their first contribution in https://github.com/mickem/nscp/pull/805

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.10...0.6.11

What's Changed

This is a bug fix release with a bit of everything (I.e. low hanging fruit). This is a "pre release" meaning I want some feedback on some of the changes (for instance default enable web server, and NRPE docs and changes). So as long as you read and understand the change-log there should not be any functional issues installing this in a production setting if you want.

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)
• Harmonized docs with https://nsclient.org
• 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

check_nscp_verison:

• Fixed check_nscp_verison parsing new semantic version

Various

• Started to add instructions for building locally
• 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 web and python dependencies

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mickem/nscp/compare/0.6.9...0.6.10