Check Command: check_http

Check the status of a HTTP/HTTPS server running on a domain or IP address on a remote host.

The included default check_https command uses the IP address of your host, as configured in NEMS Configurator.

check_http Argument Syntax

-H	-\-hostname	host name of the server where HTTP (or HTTPS) daemon is running
-I	-\-IP-address	ip address of the HTTP (or HTTPS) server
-p	-\-port	Port number where HTTP server runs. Default is 80
-4	-\-use-ipv4	This will use IPv4 connection
-6	-\-use-ipv6	This will use IPv6 connection
-S	-\-ssl or -\-sni	This will use HTTPS using default 443 port Enable SSL/TLS hostname extension support (SNI)
-C	-\-certificate	Minimum number of days a SSL certiface must be valid.
-e	-\-expect	Expected response string. Default is HTTP/1
-s	-\-string	Expected content string.
-u	-\-url	to check
-P	-\-post	encoded http POST data
-N	-\-no-body	Do not wait for whole document body to download. Stop once the headers are downloaded.
-M	-\-max-age	Check whether a document is older than x seconds. Use 5 for 5 seconds, 5m for 5 minutes, 5h for 5 hours, 5d for 5 days.
-T	-\-content-type	Indicate content type in header for POST request
-l	-\-linespan	Regular expression can span to new line (Use this with -r or -R option)
-r	-\-regex or -\-ereg	Use this regular expression to search for string in the HTTP page
-R	-\-eregi	Same as above, but with ignore case.
-a	-\-authorization	If the site uses basic authentication send uid, pwd in the format uid:pwd
-A	-\-useragent	Pass the specified string as “User Agent” in HTTP header.
-k	-\-header	Add additional tags that should be sent in the HTTP header.
-L	-\-link	The output is wrapped as  link
-f	-\-onredirect	When a  is redirected, use this to either follow the , or send ok, warning, or critical notification
-m	-\-pagesize	Specify the minimum and maximum page size expected in bytes. Format is minimum:maximum
-m	-\-pagesize	Specify the minimum and maximum page size expected in bytes. Format is minimum:maximum
-w	-\-warning	Response time in seconds for warning state
-c	-\-critical	Response time in seconds for critical state
-t	-\-timeout	Number of seconds to wait before connection times out. Default is 10 seconds

NEMS Configurator Service Parameter Examples

Check if a host is responding on the default http port (ie., 80):

[blank]

Check if a host is responding on the default https port (ie., 443):

-S

Check if a host is responding on an alternate https port (ie., 8080):

-S -p 8080

Check the state of the hosts SSL certificate and treat as a problem if it expires in 30 days or less:

-C 30

Troubleshooting

I receive a message “CRITICAL - Cannot make SSL connection. SSL alert number 40” when trying to check a secure web site

Are you using Cloudflare or another SSL redirecting system where your certificate might be shared with other hostnames? Try adding -\-sni to your service parameters to enable Server Name Indication (SNI), which allows the server to safely host multiple TLS Certificates for multiple sites, all under a single IP address.

Test openssl’s response by running this command from your NEMS server:

openssl s_client -connect YOURDOMAIN.COM:443 -debug

I receive a message “CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds” on NEMS TV Dashboard, Adagios and so-on

This means the particular board you’re using to run NEMS is a bit slow for the task. By default, check_http will timeout after 10 seconds. But what happens if your board takes 11? It generates the error “CRITICAL - Socket timeout after 10 seconds”.

To remedy this, yes, you could move to a faster board. But I’d suggest you could also add these two things to your service check ARGS as per the syntax above:

-N - only download the headers: this will result in a smaller transaction, which in turn takes less time.

-T 30 - increase the timeout to 30 seconds.

So your ARGS would become:

-N -T 30