TCP check and HTTP Check

Nagios Nagios Plugins support
1

Hi All
I was looking @ one of the posts asking about checking a service at a certain port.
So, I’ve the following question.
What is the difference between doing http check on certain port (example port 9080) and doing tcp check on port same port?

And if I check my web server using tcp check on port 80 is it same as doing http check?

Many thanks

2

check_http is a bit more “specialized” than check_tcp, it knows the error codes and some more, so it can tell if the port answers but the server isn’t serving pages.
so it’s not the same…

Luca

3

Thanks Luca
So, what about services other than HTTP? Let’s say I have a service running on port 9023, and I want to monitor it, should I use HTTP or TCP check in this case? And I would appreciate if you tell me why:?:

4

I doubt that check_http is going to be any good on an ftp port for example. So use the appropriate plugin for the service you are checking. Each plugin has a --help option that will show you what that plugin is capable of. See the plugin help for details.

5

you can’t use check_http on a port tunning a different service.
Obviously if you have a http server running on port 9023 you can use it. for everything else either you find a specific plugin or you should use check_tcp to see if a service responds on that port.

Luca