Add physical location to host and notification

[mc_uca (Mike)]

Hi all,
Is there a way to add the physical location of a host to the hosts properties, and have that included on any e-mail notifications our administrators receive? We have about 50 locations, and all hosts are labelled by a site number, such as S14-DFCS01. When reading notification e-mails after-hours, looking up what site that is can be difficult.

Thanks!

[Heavy]

This could be achieved by defining a custom host attribute under Setup → Hosts → Custom host attributes.

Example:

By selecting the last checkbox, the attribute can be used as a variable/macro in notifications.

[mc_uca (Mike)]

Thanks for that. I was able to create a custom attribute for the location. I’ve been trying to figure out how to get the location included in our default notifications, any thoughts there?

[Heavy]

In a notification script, the location should now be available in the environment variable $NOTIFY_HOST_LOCATION. At least with the CMC.

If you use the Nagios core, you need to edit the check-mk-notify command in ~/etc/nagios/conf.d/check_mk_templates.cfg. Insert a line like

NOTIFY_HOST_LOCATION='$_HOSTLOCATION$' \

in the variable definitions. After that change you need to restart Checkmk with cmk -R.

When using the predefined notification methods (e.g. HTML email or ASCII email), you can reference the custom attribute at some places. Example:

[dns_es]

nice thread, searched something like this in the past.

tried it but doesn´t work. using raw edition, edit the check_mk_templates.cfg.

$_HOSTLOCATION$ resolved as CONTENT in notification mail…

Where comes the definition from, that $_HOSTLOCATION$ is the custom host attribute “Location”?

[Heavy]

@dns_es

Where comes the definition from, that $_HOSTLOCATION$ is the custom host attribute “Location”?

You need to dig a bit into Nagios configuration to track this.

When you edit a host object and enter a location in Checkmk, and activate your changes, Checkmk creates the file ~/etc/nagios/conf.d/check_mk_objects.cfg. Here, the content entered into the custom host attribute “location” is stored as _LOCATION within a host object. Example (shortened):

define host {
  _ADDRESS_4                    10.20.30.40
  _ADDRESS_FAMILY               4
  _FILENAME                     /wato/printer/hosts.mk
  _LOCATION                     My Office, 1st floor
  address                       10.20.30.40
  alias                         Brother MFC-L3750
  check_command                 check-mk-host-ping!-w 200.00,80.00% -c 500.00,100.00%
  host_name                     bromfc
  hostgroups                    printer
  use                           check_mk_host
}

The Nagios core makes the custom host attributes available as macros. From the Nagios documentation, chapter “Custom Variable Macros”:

Any custom object variables that you define in host, service, or contact definitions are also available as macros. Custom variable macros are named as follows:

• $_HOSTvarname$
• $_SERVICEvarname$
• $_CONTACTvarname$

So in this case, the location information is available as macro _HOSTLOCATION.

[mc_uca (Mike)]

That worked! Couldn’t figure out how to get it in the body of the e-mail, but I think it’s fine just as part of the subject. Good enough. Honestly, I’m really surprised this isn’t a built-in function by default when creating hosts.