Description:

NOTE: This is all on a 64-bit VMware VM.

I used to have the "monitoring-plugins" package installed from AUR and used with an Icinga instance. This morning (2014-10-24) I ran 'pacman -Syu' which (among others) installed "community/monitoring-plugins", overriding the AUR package. Once this was done I started getting errors from the still running Icinga about 'check_ping' checks returning an error. I manually rna the 'check_ping' check to verify this and indeed I was obtaining the same error:

$ /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/check_ping -4 -H pswlab9-m15-2 -w 3000,80% -c 5000,100%
CRITICAL - You need more args!!!
Could not open pipe:

To troubleshoot I removed the new 'community/monitoring_plugins' package and re-installed the AUR one. The 'check_ping' errors disappeared and all was good again. I reinstalled the 'community/monitoring_plugins' package and the error came back.

I then downloaded the PKGBUILD for 'community/monitoring_plugins' and compiled it manually with makepkg. I then installed this "manual" package over the official Archlinux one:

$ sudo pacman -U monitoring-plugins-2.1-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
loading packages...
warning: monitoring-plugins-2.1-2 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...

Packages (1):

Name Old Version New Version Net Change

monitoring-plugins 2.1-2 2.1-2 0.46 MiB

Total Installed Size: 2.27 MiB
Net Upgrade Size: 0.46 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]

I was surprised a "Net Change" was reported since I expected the packages to be essentially the same. I uninstalled the manual package, installed the Archlinux one, copied '/usr/libmonitoring-plugins' to '/usr/libmonitoring-plugins-from-arch', uninstalled it, and then installed the manual package. I then did a diff and got the following:

$ diff -u /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_by_ssh
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_dig
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_dns
Binary files /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/check_load and /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch/check_load differ
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_mysql
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_mysql_query
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_nagios
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_pgsql
Binary files /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/check_ping and /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch/check_ping differ
Only in /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins: check_procs
Common subdirectories: /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/__pycache__ and /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch/__pycache__
diff -u /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/utils.pm /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch/utils.pm
--- /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins/utils.pm 2014-10-24 09:47:30.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/lib/monitoring-plugins-from-arch/utils.pm 2014-10-23 15:30:53.000000000 -0400
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
$PATH_TO_RPCINFO = "" ;
$PATH_TO_LMSTAT = "" ;
$PATH_TO_SMBCLIENT = "" ;
-$PATH_TO_MAILQ = "/usr/bin/mailq";
+$PATH_TO_MAILQ = "";
$PATH_TO_QMAIL_QSTAT = "";

## common variables

So it looks like the Archlinux x86_64 package for monitoring-plugins-2.1-2 is somehow different from a manually compiled one from the 2.1-2 PKGBUILD. I have no idea why that is, but as it seems to break the 'check_ping' (among other things) I thought I should report it.

I'm not sure if the i686 version of the package would have the same issue.