Install with no or limited root access

Nagios Nagios Installation support
1

This may seem like an odd situation but it is what I have to deal with. I have used Nagios successfully in the past and it was a very useful tool. We presently have a situation where we need to manage about nine machines and many services (HTTPS, Oracle, etc). We also have many processes that run on three of the machines that Nagios would be a great help in monitoring the log files and certain directories. I have created plugin’s in the past and will do so again if needed. Anyway what I am faced with is not having root access to the install. I may be able to get limited sudo but I would need to enumerate everything that requires root access to do. The fact of the matter is I do not own the machines nor do I have much control over them.

To complicate the matter further Nagios ( a limited install ) is already on the machines. And yes I asked about piggybacking off of it or having a second copy installed for me and they politely offered another ‘corporate solution’ instead (read this as more $$$ and zero control). I know I would need to run Nagios with a custom configuration with its own ports for NRPE and everything and I am prepared to do that. I plan to have my own copies of nagios and apache in directories I control and apache would be run on a non-reserved port.

What I need to know are the installation steps that require root and or an alternate installation path that can limit the use of root. Since the nagios user and nagioscmd group already exists I should be able to use these.

I know I should be able to compile as my user but do any of these require root ?

make install
make install-init
make install-config
make install-commandmode
make install-webconf

It has been several years since I have worked with Nagios so I am sure I have overlooked something. I appreciate any helpful information that anyone can offer.

thanks

2

i’m running some nagios checks on a set of servers i’m managing for a non profit organization…
i run these checks with check_by_ssh… most checks dont’ really need root rights, i just copied them over (it would be better to compile the plugins but it’s sometimes quite a problem without root access, or without compiler access).

I hope this helps… :confused: If you don’t need a complete nagios environment on these server but you could do with a passive check it might be a good option.