If you want nagios email notifications but don’t want to run a local MTA (like postfix, exim, qmail, or sendmail), you’ll need a command-line SMTP client. Such a program can connect to an SMTP server, authenticate, and generate a message based on input arguments and file handles. One such program is sendEmail (note, not “sendmail”).

I found myself wanting to use sendEmail with nagios, and I found these helpful resources:

I made some changes and came up with these instructions which show using nagios hosted on an ubuntu machine notifying via sendemail through a gmail account:

  • Create the gmail account
  • On your server (Ubuntu in this case) run: sudo apt-get install sendemail (you can use the installation instructions on the sendEmail website if you aren’t on ubuntu or debian)
  • Edit /etc/nagios3/resource.cfg, adding these lines (using your account info instead of the example account info below):
# The "from address" for notifications
$USER5$=example@gmail.com
    
# The SMTP server
$USER7$=smtp.gmail.com
    
# the SMTP authentication username and password
$USER9$=example@gmail.com
$USER10$=examplepassword
  • Add these commands to /etc/nagios3/commands.cfg:
# Lots of line-continuation characters are used in these next two commands
# for improved readability.
# If you change the number of arguments to printf, make sure you change the
# corresponding number of "%b"s in the first argument
    
    
define command{
	command_name	notify-host-by-email
	command_line	/usr/bin/printf "%b%b%b%b%b%b%b" \
"***** Nagios *****\n\n" \
"Notification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\n" \
"Host: $HOSTNAME$\n" \
"State: $HOSTSTATE$\n" \
"Address: $HOSTADDRESS$\n" \
"Info: $HOSTOUTPUT$\n\n" \
"Date/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n" \
| /usr/bin/sendemail -s $USER7$ -xu $USER9$ -xp $USER10$ \
-l /var/log/sendemail \
-f $USER5$ \
-t $CONTACTEMAIL$ \
-u "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Host Alert: $HOSTNAME$ is $HOSTSTATE$ **"
	}


define command{
	command_name	notify-service-by-email
	command_line	/usr/bin/printf "%b%b%b%b%b%b%b%b%b" \
"***** Nagios *****\n\n" \
"Notification Type: $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$\n\n" \
"Service: $SERVICEDESC$\n" \
"Host: $HOSTALIAS$\n" \
"Address: $HOSTADDRESS$\n" \
"State: $SERVICESTATE$\n\n" \
"Date/Time: $LONGDATETIME$\n\n" \
"Additional Info:\n\n" \
"$SERVICEOUTPUT$" \
| /usr/bin/sendemail -s $USER7$ -xu $USER9$ -xp $USER10$ \
-l /var/log/sendemail \
-f $USER5$ \
-t $CONTACTEMAIL$ \
-u "** $NOTIFICATIONTYPE$ Service Alert: $HOSTALIAS$/$SERVICEDESC$ is $SERVICESTATE$ **"
}

  • Comment-out the old definitions of “notify-host-by-email” and “notify-service-by-email”

  • Create the log file with: touch /var/log/sendemail and chown nagios /var/log/sendemail

  • Restart nagios, possibly with service nagios3 restart