Service Notifications not being sent

We have a Nagios 1.2 system installed and it works well most of the time.
However we have seen occasions where a service would go down, but Nagios would not send any notification.
We would restart Nagios and it would then send out a lot of HOST DOWN notifications. The host has one service for it (tcp port check) and the check_host_alive is the standard ping test.
Any thoughts? Thanks,
Toby

Check your nagios.cfg file.

RETAIN STATE INFORMATION

This setting determines whether or not Nagios will save state

information for services and hosts before it shuts down. Upon

startup Nagios will reload all saved service and host state

information before starting to monitor. This is useful for

maintaining long-term data on state statistics, etc, but will

slow Nagios down a bit when it (re)starts. Since its only

a one-time penalty, I think its well worth the additional

startup delay.

retain_state_information=1

STATE RETENTION FILE

This is the file that Nagios should use to store host and

service state information before it shuts down. The state

information in this file is also read immediately prior to

starting to monitor the network when Nagios is restarted.

This file is used only if the preserve_state_information

variable is set to 1.

state_retention_file=/usr/local/nagios/var/status.sav

RETENTION DATA UPDATE INTERVAL

This setting determines how often (in minutes) that Nagios

will automatically save retention data during normal operation.

If you set this value to 0, Nagios will not save retention

data at regular interval, but it will still save retention

data before shutting down or restarting. If you have disabled

state retention, this option has no effect.

retention_update_interval=60

USE RETAINED PROGRAM STATE

This setting determines whether or not Nagios will set

program status variables based on the values saved in the

retention file. If you want to use retained program status

information, set this value to 1. If not, set this value

to 0.

use_retained_program_state=1

To fix the “service down/no notifications sent” problem, clik the link called “Enable notifications for this service” for the service(s) that you wish to have notifications sent.

I know that sounds weird, since you have notifications enabled in your config files, but it has to be done. I’m not sure why, and it’s a common question and bugged me for weeks. If the link isn’t there, but the disable link is, disable, then enable, and you will be good to go.