Convert PNG to GD2 for nagios

When working with nagios and working with new icons to show on your status map you might encounter a filetype called GD2. In most cases you will have a file, for example LINUX_SERVER.png and you will also have a file called LINUX_SERVER.gd2 .


The .png files are used to be displayed in your browser wherever they are needed. However the status maps where you can see all your server in on screen on a map is generated. For the generation of this map the nagios code is reading the images needed and for a more direct access to the image source the gd2 files are used. GD2 is coming from the GD Graphics Library.

In some cases you download a icon set which is not containing gd2 files but only png files. In this case you can make use of the pngtogd2 utility. This utility is (for debian) part of the libgd-tools package and can be installed via apt-get.

When using the pngtogd2 utiltiy please make sure you use the uncompressed option and chunck size of 0. Compressed gd2 files will make rendering the status map slower so if you do not really need to use compression than don’t use it.

Nagios and Oracle

Running a Oracle database in a production environment can be a relieve or can be a hassle. You can make it a relieve by monitoring your systems in a good way so you will be notified before a problem becomes a big problem. This can make your life as a Oracle DBA or system administrator a lot easier.

You will also be able to guarantee a higher business continuity meaning that the employees can continue work because the DBA’s and system administrators have a better view of upcoming problems and will be able to solve those problems before they become a thread to business continuity.

In this post I like point out to 3 new Nagios Oracle scripts.

One will check the oracle instance on number of users, table spaces, possible ORA messages will be send to Nagios so you will be able to view from your Nagios web application or it can be mailed or even send via SMS to you. Thanks to Sven Dolderer for this script written in Perl. You can download check_oracle_instance.pl from my website.

You can also download check_oracle_status.sh a shell script written by latigid010@yahoo.com and check_ora_table_space.pl a perl script written by Erwan Arzur.