check_diskio

check_diskio is an open source, free, simple and POSIX-compatible plugin implemented in Perl for the Nagios IT infrastructure monitoring system. It designed to allow users to effortlessly monitor disk I/O (input/output) on various Linux kernel-based operating systems.

Command-line options

The program has been engineered in such a way that supports systems that run both Linux 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. It’s a command-line utility and it features several options, such as the ability to set a device name or mount point, the critical number of sectors, as well as the number of sectors that generate a warning.

Among other command-line options, we can mention the ability to add unit of measurement, to specify the sector size in bytes, to reset the counters, to run in quiet mode and note issue any warnings, to specify unit of threshold, to set the debugging output, and to set the seconds before the plugin times out.

Another interesting feature is the ability to strip partition numbers from the device number, a function that is very useful for HP Smart Array cards.

Supported units of measurement and thresholds

Among the supported units of measurement, we can mention sectors, bits and bytes. On the other hand, supported units of thresholds include kilo binary, mega binary, giga binary, kilo, mega, and giga.

Getting started with check_diskio

To install and use the check_diskio program under your Nagios infrastructure, you must download the latest version of the software from Softoware, save the archive on a location of your choice, extract its contents and open a terminal emulator software.

In the Terminal app, navigate to the location of the extracted archive files (e.g. cd /home/softoware/check_diskio-3.2.7), run the ‘make’ command to compile the program, and then run the ‘make install’ as root to install it.

What is new in this release:

• This version fixes a bug when calling the plugin in periods shorter than one second.

What is new in version 3.2.2:

• Fixed a bug that ignored devices specified with -d /dev/devname.

What is new in version 3.2.1:

• An unknown status is returned if the plugin does not have the necessary permissions to check LVM volumes.

What is new in version 3.0.0:

• The simultaneous checking of multiple devices is supported. Logical volumes (LVM) are mapped to the corresponding physical ones.
• Command line processing is now implemented using the standard Nagios::Plugin::Getopt class and includes the possibility to specify a timeout.

Requirements:

• Nagios