Nagios NCPA Agent Installation

Nagios NCPA Agent Installation

Before a server can be monitored the Nagios NCPA Agent must be installed. This article will go over installing the agent on both Windows and Ubuntu Linux based machine. NCPA agents are available other flavors or Linux as well as MacOS at https://www.nagios.org/ncpa/#downloads 

Windows Servers

Begin by logging into the server. Once logged in, download the latest Windows NCPA Agent and run the installer. Accept the defaults until you get the Listener Configuration screen. Enter the Token and then click Next

Accept the defaults for the rest of the installation and click Install. Once completed, the ncpa_listener service should be started and the firewall port 5693 automatically added. Next copy any host based plugins to the server. The plugins should be placed in the C:\Program Files(x86)\Nagios\NCPA\plugins folder

Linux Servers

These instructions have only been tested by me, on Ubuntu Linux 16.04, 18.04, and 20.04. Other Linux distribution instructions can be found at https://www.nagios.org/ncpa/#downloads. We’ll be using the following Nagios repos:

• 16.04 – deb https://repo.nagios.com/deb/xenial /
• 18.04 – deb https://repo.nagios.com/deb/bionic /
• 20.04 – deb https://repo.nagios.com/deb/focal /

Begin by opening a SSH session to the server

Use Nano to add the repo to your apt list

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nagios.list

deb https://repo.nagios.com/deb/focal /

Save the changes by pressing Ctrl+X, Y for Yes, and Enter to select the file name to write (by default is the file we have opened)

Add the GPG key

wget -qO - https://repo.nagios.com/GPG-KEY-NAGIOS-V2 | sudo apt-key add -

Install the NCPA Agent

sudo apt update && sudo apt install ncpa

Once installed, we’ll need to edit the config file and add our Token

sudo nano /usr/local/ncpa/etc/ncpa.conf

Scroll down until you see community_string and enter your Token

Save the changes by pressing Ctrl+X, Y for Yes, and Enter to select the file name to write (by default is the file we have opened)

Restart the NCPA Listener service for the changes to take effect

sudo systemctl restart ncpa_listener.service

Done!