Downtimes Status

Nagios's web interface allows you to list all scheduled downtimes. This page can be accessed by clicking on the Downtime link on the left-side menu. The following is an example of this page:

The page consists of two pages, which all scheduled downtimes, separately for hosts and services. You can delete a downtime by clicking the 'trash' icon on the right in the row that describes that particular downtime entry.

Downtimes can be triggered by other downtimes. When a host downtime is scheduled, Nagios automatically adds downtimes for all child hosts. For example, in the current configuration, if host router has a downtime scheduled, then router-aster will also have the same downtime as it will be unreachable during this period. Such downtimes are indicated by the Downtime ID and Trigger ID columns. In the example above, the Internet IN and Internet OUT services are scheduled to be down as the router-aster host will also be down. We can see that the router-aster host downtime has its Downtime ID set to 2, and both service downtimes have Trigger ID also set to 2.

Scheduling Downtimes

In order to schedule a downtime, open a host or service information page and use the Schedule downtime for this host option or the Schedule downtime for this service option. It is also possible to use the Downtime page to schedule downtimes directly. In this case, you will need to know the host name and service description of the service you want to disable, as Nagios will not fill these in automatically.

The following is a screenshot of scheduling downtime for a service:

The form consists of Host and Service Name, Comment, and an option list to choose a downtime that triggered this host/service to also be down. When specifying the period during which the downtime should be scheduled, it is possible to enter Start Time and End Time or use the Duration field. If you want to specify how long the service will be offline, choose Flexible in the Type field. Otherwise, choose Fixed to specify the start and end time.

Scheduling downtime for a host is very similar—the only difference being that the Service field is missing, and the Child Hosts option list is added to specify how child hosts should be handled.

Nagios can automatically schedule downtimes for child hosts. When scheduling a host downtime, an additional option is present to indicate whether child hosts should also be scheduled for downtime and be triggered by this downtime.