Check portsindex age - NRPE ports age check

I monitor the age of the file /usr/ports/INDEX-8 (or 7 or whatever the version of FreeBSD is running on the server) and trigger a warning if it is older than 14 days, and go critical if it is older than one month. I update ports nightly from /etc/crontab with the following portsnap commands:

#update ports
0	3	*	*	*	root	/usr/sbin/portsnap cron && /usr/sbin/portsnap -I update

Note: The above /etc/crontab line will download the latest snapsnot and update the ports index files. The ports themselves will not be extracted. As explained in the portsnap manpage, it is a bad idea to automatically update /etc/ports - bad things will happen if you accidently update while installing something. This means that you should run portsnap update before installing/upgrading any ports.

Configuring Nagios

I added the following service to the configuration on the Nagios server:

define service{
        use                             generic-service
        hostgroup_name                  freebsd-servers,freebsd-jails
        service_description             nrpe_check_portsindex_age
        check_command                   check_nrpe2!check_portsindex_age
}

I want all my FreeBSD servers and jails to have their ports age checked, so I added the hostgroup freebsd-servers and freebsd-jails to this check.

Configuring NRPE

Add the following line to /usr/local/etc/nrpe.cfg:

command[check_portsindex_age]=/usr/local/libexec/nagios/check_file_age -w 1209600 -c 2592000 -f /usr/ports/INDEX-7

1209600 seconds is 14 days, 2592000 is 30 days. Remember to use the correct INDEX-x file, in this example I am monitoring a FreeBSD 7 server.

Remember to restart NRPE after changing the config:

sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/nrpe2 restart