test_check.ps1

This is a simple test to make sure monitoring is working as you would expect. Could you use ping? Sure, but then does the remote machine allow pings out? Does the machine you want to ping reply to pings? What are the command line options for check_ping? How would you make it go critical if you wanted to test notifications?

test_check.ps1 makes this simple. It's a Powershell script that will run on Windows or Linux (assuming you installed Powershell on Linux). If you run the script with no options, it returns critical after 2 seconds. Or you can run "test_check.ps1 -returncode $INT1 -timetowait $INT2" where $INT1 is the return code you want it to return (use 5 to have it return a random return code), and $INT2 is the amount of time you want the script to "run" for.

Call this Powershell script from an agent, like NCPA, and you can test:
* HTML processing in return messages
* Notifications
* How your Nagios system reacts to long running checks
* What it's like to have a check that jumps randomly between OK, WARNING, CRIT, and UNKNOWN

All of this without having to remember a bunch of command line switches, or include other networked servers or devices in the equation.

Enjoy!