Caveats

The WebReboot^® Nagios^® Plugin is a powerful system that when properly configured can help keep your network running. However, when misconfigured, the plugin can introduce headaches. This section raises some issues that you should watch out for.

Password Leak

Granting a user access to your WebReboot is akin to granting them physical access to each connected host. A user connected to your WebReboot can power-on, power-off, and reboot hosts. Please ensure that your settings files are adequately protected to avoid leaking your WebReboot authentication information.

Power State Cycles

A power state cycle can be introduced when Nagios is configured to both turn off a host under certain conditions as well as power on a host when it is off. As an example, you may wish to turn off your host when a temperature threshold his exceeded. If you also have a host event handler enabled to power on a host that is off, you could run into trouble. Please consider your circumstances and configure your timings accordingly.

Service Check Race Conditions

The WebReboot allows you to take corrective actions that will alter the power state of your host. As an example, if an SSH server check fails, you may wish to reset the host. If other service checks occur while the host is rebooting, they may fail. If these in turn attempt to reboot a host, you could end up with a large number of reboots in a short time span. The results here depend highly on your Nagios timing parameters, but it's almost guaranteed to not be what you want. Please make sure your timing parameters allow for the corrective actions you wish to take.