Improve Pending Updates for Linux plugin

Hi @japavon, Thank you for your idea proposal. I would invite you to reformulate it according to the guidelines you can find here. This would help the product management team to better evaluate your proposal. Thanks for your understanding 😊

Detailed explanation of the new idea proposal:

The service template OS-Linux-Pending-Updates that is using the centreon_linux_ssh.pl plugin is showing the number of pending updates but not it’s type (security updates for example)

Persona: it is for a Centreon administrator

Problem to solve: To monitor Linux operating system pending updates

Expected outcome: Be able to check if an operating system of a linux server is updated by monitoring if there are any pending secururity updates not only the number of any kind of pending updates

Potential solutions: Add a new threshold to filter security updates

Screenshots: First screenshot is showing how a similar Nagios plugin does the job and the Centreon plugin don’t.

Hi @japavon 

Thanks for posting your idea, indeed it would be interesting to have similar capabilities. I’ll measure the impact on existing installation and check with the dev team what we can offer as a solution. 

Kind regards,

Hi @ProductGuru 

Do you have any update about this?

kind regards,

Josep A Pavón

Hello @japavon 

We plan to release this in the next two months. We didn’t find any acceptable solution for now regarding OS using apt-get. 

We will add a --check-security flag for yum/dnf based OS. Would that work for you?

Best

Hi @sims24 

Sure! Our Centreon servers are CentOS so with the flag that you mentioned will work for me.

So I just need to wait for an update of the Centreon Pack Plugin?

Thanks a lot!

Yes, I’ll keep you posted as soon as there’s anything to test. 

Hi @japavon 

The modification has been merged, you can now use a --security option to check for security updates only. 

You can update your plugin from unstable or wait for the next release to be out (mid-october).

You can indeed also clone the centreon-plugins repository in your /tmp and test to share feedbacks! 

Thanks

Hi @sims24 !!

thanks a lot to include this option to the plugin it will be very usefull for us.

Can you give me a clue to clone the centreon-plugins repo? I cloned it from github with git command to a folder but I can’t see the  centreon_linux_ssh.pl file. 

Do you need from me to open a case for that question?

Regards,

Josep A Pavón

Hi, 

Actually, you have to use the os::linux::local::plugin. It has remote options and you can pass ssh credentials/key. 

Just change the beginning of commands that run actually on your system by adding:

perl /tmp/centreon-plugins/centreon_plugins.pl --plugin=os::linux::local::plugin ...

Hi @sims24 

we tested the new feature and it works like a charm but….

Is it possible to add to the output the number of security updates plus the non-security updates? Like Nagios Plugin does.

If you see at the screen caputure above when the flag --check-security is added it only shows the number of securtiy updates, it would be interessant to have the number of non-security updates as well.

And then with the proper threshold (security or non security) show ok, warning or critical.

Kind regards,

Josep A Pavón

Hi @japavon 

We thought about it, but it implied to run two different commands and we didn’t want to do this for various reason. 

We stick to the mantra “do one thing and do it right”, that’s why we will not likely implement such combined check.

Best

​ Hi @sims24!

That makes sense! You said in a previous message that it will be available in the next release around mid-october. Do you have a final date for it?

Thanks a lot! ​