Nagios, 2nd Edition

14.3 Client-side Configuration

The configuration file send_nsca.cfg on the client side must contain the same encryption parameters as the file on the Nagios server:

password=verysecret
decryption_method=10

Since the key is also written here in plain text, it should not be readable for just any user. For this reason it is best to create a user nagios and a group nagios on the client side:

linux:~ # groupadd -g 9000 nagios
linux:~ # useradd -u 9000 -g nagios -d /usr/local/nagios \
       -c "Nagios Admin" nagios

You should now protect the file send_nsca.cfg so that only the user nagios can read it, and ensure, using the SUID mechanism, that the program send_nsca always runs under the user ID of this user. If you now grant execute permission to the group ...