Scenario / Problem:

Nagios is not sending notifications via email.

In the logs:

cat /var/log/messages |grep notification

nagios nagios: Warning: Contact ‘nagiosadmin’ service notification command ‘/usr/bin/printf “%b” “***** Nagios *****\n\nNotification Type: PROBLEM\n\nService: Total Processes\nHost: thehost\nAddress: ipaddress\nState: WARNING\n\nDate/Time: Tue Sept 29 16:06:54 PDT 2009\n\nAdditional Info:\n\nPROCS WARNING: 397 processes with STATE = RSZDT” | /bin/mail -s “** PROBLEM Service Alert: hostname/Total Processes is WARNING **” support@acme.com’ timed out after 30 seconds

Solution / Answer:

The default time-out setting of 30 seconds is too short, for MTA to process request. Change the default time to 120 seconds or more.

Change Nagios notification_timeout settings

Change the setting “notification_timeout” in nagios.cfg

# vi /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

Change the value of “notification_timeout=30″ to “notification_timeout=120″

notification_timeout=120