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Mister IT Guru
Asked: 2011-01-26 03:19:26 +0800 CST

How to use nagios to monitor a printer

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I have network based printers, and I was wondering, as all network printers with SNMP able to give up information such as if they need ink, or toners or just their general status.

I'm not the greatest fan of walking up and down flights of stairs checking printers, because users can't be bothered to mention that a printer isn't working. (Unless they have a deadline, in which case, they use the broken printer, and somehow remember exactly how to log incident tickets!)

Any hints and tips appreciated. Thanks

monitoring nagios

2 Answers

  1. As Khaled said, you can use check_snmp to monitor the printers - you'll need to check the docs for your printers to see what OIDs to check for the things you want to monitor. I expect that most of the things you are looking for will be snmp trap alerts rather than exposed through passive checks (checks initiated from Nagios) - I always struggled to get traps working with Nagios.

    Alternatively, a lot of printers that support snmp also support email alerts for the same events. That may do all you need without requiring Nagios.

    Also note that if you want to monitor other printer counters, you may actually want to monitor the print queue on your server if you are using windows print queues.

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  2. Best Answer

    You can use the check_snmp plugin that comes with the standard nagios plugins.

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