Integrate with Nagios

Jira Service Management provides a rich bidirectional integration plugin for Nagios. Jira Service Management has a number of easy-to-use integration methods (email, API, command line tools, programming libraries, etc.) to ensure all monitoring tools are easily integrated with Jira Service Management. Nagios is integrated with Jira Service Management via the email interface or by executing scripts in any language that uses Jira Service Management Web API. This document describes two supported integration options.

What does the integration offer?

The Nagios plugin for Jira Service Management supports bidirectional integration with Nagios. The integration leverages Jira Service Management’s Nagios-specific executable and JEC utility to automatically create rich alerts (status, alert histogram, trends, etc.). It synchronizes alert status between Nagios and Jira Service Management. The Nagios plugin is the recommended integration method as it enables Nagios to take advantage of advanced capabilities provided by Jira Service Management.

How does the integration work?

• When a host or service state becomes down in Nagios, an alert is created in Jira Service Management.

• Upon creating the new alert, related histogram and trends images from Nagios are automatically attached to the alert.

• When the Jira Service Management alert is acknowledged, the alert in Nagios is also acknowledged automatically, and vice versa.

• When a note is added to the Jira Service Management alert, the alert in Nagios is also updated automatically, and vice versa.

Set up the integration

The Nagios integration plugin utilizes the full capabilities of Jira Service Management and provides bi-directional integration with Nagios. The steps in the following procedure describe how to integrate Jira Service Management and Nagios using the Nagios integration plugin. Note that slight alteration to these instructions may be necessary depending on the exact Linux distribution and your Nagios configuration.

Installation prerequisites

The installation packages support the following systems:

• RedHat-based Linux distributions

• Debian-based Linux distributions

Install the Jira Service Management plugin for Nagios

Jira Edge Connector (JEC) is a prerequisite for configuring the outgoing authentication of Nagios integration. You can combinedly use JEC and Nagios scripts to update alerts on Nagios. With this setup, you can deploy your own script, modify the ones provided, or run customized actions on Nagios. Download the latest version of the Nagios package.

RedHat-based distributions

Run the following command: 

rpm -i jsm-nagios-<your_version>.rpm

Before rpm upgrades, back up your configuration files.

The rpm package does not overwrite the existing configuration during upgrades. It saves the new default configuration file as integration.conf.rpmnew. Add the-- force parameter to upgrade from version 201X-XX-XX to 2.X.X. For example: rpm -U --force jsm-nagios-<your_version>.rpm

Read more about config file handling for rpm upgrades.

Debian-based distributions

Run the following command: 

dpkg -i jsm-nagios-<your_version>.deb

Add a Nagios integration

To add a Nagios integration in Jira Service Management, complete the following steps:

1. Go to your team’s operations page.

2. On the left navigation panel, select Integrations and then Add integration.

3. Run a search and select “Nagios”.

4. On the next screen, enter a name for the integration.

5. Optional: Select a team in Assignee team if you want a specific team to receive alerts from the integration.

6. Select Continue.
   The integration is saved at this point.

7. Expand the Steps to configure the integration section and copy the API key.
   You will use this key while configuring the integration in Nagios later.

8. Select Turn on integration.
   The rules you create for the integration will work only if you turn on the integration.

Configure the Jira Service Management plugin in Nagios

The plugin uses a golang-executable file (included in the plugin as send2jsm) to create, acknowledge, and close alerts in Jira Service Management. To make send2jsm work, you need to make some configurations. The following table lists the parameters and states if they are mandatory. Setting the apiKey is required. Other configuration parameters are set to their default values that work with most Nagios implementations but may also need to be modified.

Configuration parameters

Configure the golang-executable file in any of the following three methods:

Method 1: Configure from conf file

Configure from the /home/jsm/jec/conf/integration.conf file. This overwrites any configuration you previously made in the script.

Method 2: Configure by using Golang flags

Configure by entering flags to command in the jsm.cfg file. Use -apiKey flag for your apiKey and -ns flag for the nagios_server name. If you don't have multiple Nagios servers, you don't have to define the Nagios server. Using flags overwrites all the other configuration methods mentioned earlier.

Configure the apiKey from the jsm.cfg file as follows (in JSON format):

When apiKey is added to the cfg file, it overrides the apiKey in the integration.conf file.

To send additional custom arguments, add them after the flags. For example, customArgName1 customArgValue1 customArgName2 customArgValue2. Parse custom arguments by adding {{_payload.customArgName}} to wherever is needed in the input fields. Read more about dynamic properties.

Method 3: Configure from script

Configure apiKey and nagios_server from the send2jsm.go script. Build the script again and put the new executable into the /home/jsm/jec/scripts directory. Learn more about the location of the send2jsm.go and how to build a go script in the “Source and recompiling send2jsm” section in this article.

Define Nagios contacts

1. Copy the /home/jsm/jec/jsm-nagios/jsm.cfg file (configures a contact, its host, and service notification commands) in to /usr/local/nagios/etc/objects directory.

Shell

2. Add the following line to the main Nagios configuration file (NAGIOS_HOME/etc/nagios.cfg):

Shell

3. Add the contact “jsm" to the Nagios configuration’s main contact group in  NAGIOS_HOME/etc/objects/contacts.cfg file. If using the default configuration contacts.cfg, add "jsm" user to the "admins" contact group.

4. Restart Nagios.

If everything goes well, alerts are seen in Jira Service Management for every notification created in Nagios.

Optional: Configure Jira Service Management to update Nagios

Select the Send Alert Actions To Nagios checkbox on the integration configuration page. You can combinedly use JEC and Nagios scripts to update alerts on Nagios. With this setup, you can deploy your own script, modify the ones provided, or run customized actions on Nagios.

To run actions in Nagios, JEC gets the configuration parameters from the configuration file, config.json (found at /home/jsm/jec/conf/jec-config.json).

Configuration parameters

• alert_histogram_image_url: JEC retrieves histogram images from Nagios using this URL. Localhost should be replaced with the Nagios server address.

• trends_image_url: JEC retrieves trends images from Nagios using this URL. Localhost should be replaced with the Nagios server address.

• command_url: URL to update Nagios alerts when alerts get acknowledged, commented, etc.

• user: Username to authenticate Nagios web server to get Nagios histogram and trends images.

• password: Password to authenticate Nagios web server to get Nagios histogram and trends images.

The downloaded package includes the JEC utility (found in /usr/local/bin) and the script that JEC needs to run (found in /home/jsm/jec/scripts). Be sure to run JEC after configuring it. Find out how to run JEC. If using JEC, rich alerts are populated with host or service current status information in Jira Service Management for every notification created in Nagios.

Source and recompiling send2jsm

The source for the executable send2jsm is found in /usr/bin/ and send2jsm.go, in /home/jsm/jec/scripts respectively. You can also download them from the repository. To change the behavior of the executable, edit send2jsm.go and build it by using the following command: go build send2jsm.go. Find out how to install go. The executable in the plugin is built for linux/amd64 systems.

FAQ and troubleshooting

If the integration is not working, review this section and follow the prescribed guidelines.

1. Nagios alerts aren’t getting created in Jira Service Management

Run the following test command from the shell and check if a test alert is created in Jira Service Management: 

• If you get a "Trace/breakpoint trap" error, the send2jsm plugin isn't compatible with the server distribution. Rebuild send2jsm.go according to the specific server environment as described in the “Source and recompiling send2jsm” section in this article.

• If the alert is created in Jira Service Management, the integration is configured correctly. Nagios is probably not notifying the Jira Service Management contact for alerts. Check your Nagios alert notifications log.

• If the alert is not created in Jira Service Management, check the logs at /var/log/jec/send2jsm.log.
  Look for the following errors in the log file:

  • If you see "RestException[Could not authenticate.]" in the logs, Jira Service Management couldn't identify the API key. Check if the API key is set correctly per the steps outlined in the “Configure the Jira Service Management plugin in Nagios” section of this article.

  • If unsure of the problem, set the plugin's log level to debug and try again. Contact us and share the logs.

• If there is no /var/log/jec/send2jsm.log file or there are no logs in it, check the following:

  1. Check if the Nagios user has permission to write to /var/log/jec directory. The installation package should automatically do this for you. If you face issues, run the following command: 
     chown -R nagios:jsm /var/log/jec

  2. Check the Nagios server logs at /opt/nagios/log/zeneventd.log. See if there are error logs regarding send2jsm. Contact us with the logs if needed.

Set send2jsm plugin's log level to DEBUG

Set the send2jsm plugin's log level to DEBUG. Open the /home/jsm/jec/conf/integration.conf file and change the line send2jsm.logger=warning to nagios2jsm.logger=debug.

2. The Nagios alert is not acknowledged when the alert is acknowledged in Jira Service Management

Check the alert logs.

• If "Posted [Acknowledge] action to Nagios.." is not present in the log, Jira Service Management didn't send the Acknowledge action to Nagios. Check the integration configuration, it might not have a matching the alert action.

• If only the "Posted [Acknowledge] action to Nagios.." log occurs followed by no related logs, it might mean JEC is having connection problems. Check the logs.

3. Couldn’t open Nagios RPM package

• If you figure out while installing the rpm package that the package is obsolete, use rpm -i jsm-nagios-1.0.4-rpm-x86-64.rpm --nodeps instead.

• If you get "is already installed" error, use rpm -i jsm-nagios-1.0.4-rpm-x86-64.rpm --force instead.

4. Permission error occurs while attaching zip file to alert in script

If you get "PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: details_*" error while running the script, prefix the path of the script to the "file_name" variable in the attach method of the script.