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NSCAM README
(Shamelessly stolen from nsca add-on.)
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Purpose
-------
The purpose of this addon is to allow you to send service check
results to several monitoring servers running Nagios using IP
multicast. WARNING: All data will be sent as pure text messages!


Contents
--------

There are two pieces to this addon:

  1) nscamd     - This program runs as a daemon on the central servers
                  that runs Nagios.  It listens for host and service
	                check results from remote machines (sent using the
		              nscam_send program described below).  Upon receiving
                  data from a remote client, the daemon will make a
                  *very* basic attempt at validating the data it has
                  received from the client.  This is done by checking
									the sender IP network. If it is OK then, the daemon
									will make entries in the Nagios external command file
									telling Nagios to process the host or service check result.  

		  Notes:      The nscamd daemon must have sufficient rights
                  to open the Nagios command file for writing.  Also,
		              Nagios will only process passive service check
                  results that it finds in the external command file
                  if the service has been defined in the host config
                  file (i.e. hosts.cfg) and it is being monitored.


  2) nscam_send  - This is the client program that is used to send
		              service check information from a remote machine to
                  the nscamd daemon on the central machines that runs
                  Nagios using IP multicast. Service check information
									is read from the standard input in tab-delimited
									format as follows:

			<host_name>[tab]<svc_description>[tab]<return_code>[tab]<plugin_output>[newline]

	          where:

			<host_name>=short name of host that the service is associated with
			<svc_description>=description of the service
			<return_code>=numeric return code
			<plugin_output>=output from service check

		  Host check information is submitted in a similiar
 		  fashion - just leave out the service description:

			<host_name>[tab]<return_code>[tab]<plugin_output>[newline]


Compiling
---------

The code is very basic and may not work on your particular
system without some tweaking.  I just haven't put a lot of effort
into this addon.  Most users should be able to compile
the daemon and client piece with the following commands...

./configure
make all

The binaries will be located in the src/ directory after you
run 'make all' and will have to be installed manually.


Installing
----------

The nscam_send program should be placed on remote machines that
you want to have communicate with the nscam daemon. This means
that you may have to compile the nscam_send program on the
remote machine, if its not the same OS/architecture as that of
the central server.

The nscam daemon should be placed somewhere on the central
servers running Nagios.

Security
--------

nscam currently s not secure at all, communicates with pure text messages!


(NOT) Running Under INETD or XINETD
-----------------------------

INETD and XINETD doesn't support IP multicast. :(

Questions?
----------

If you have questions about this addon, or problems getting things
working, send me email.

	-- Peter Meszaros (hauptadler@gmail.com)




