During development there may be cases where the handling of bugfixes might touch the userspace. We try to avoid this as far as possible but sometimes it is inevitable.

Normal Icinga update Path

If there's a new Icinga version available on https://www.icinga.com/ you should consider updating. Newer versions contain bugfixes, minor or major, which makes it even more important to get the latest and the greatest. If you already installed Icinga using the quickstart guides it's rather easy to install newer versions. It's also possible to perform that without root privileges by doing an install from source. It highly depends on your likings.

Make sure you'll have a safe backup of your Icinga installation and configs. If anything goes wrong you can restore your old setup rather easy.

Regular updates of Icinga are possible just by re-installing Icinga. Please keep in mind that configure requires the same parameters as before - look it up in config.log and store that in a safe location.

Become the icinga user. Debian/Ubuntu users might use sudo -s icinga.

 $> su -l icinga

Get the latest Icinga version from https://www.icinga.com/ and extract it. Then run configure like you did with the old version.

 #> ./configure --with-command-group=icinga-cmd

Compile the source.

 #> make all

Please make sure that you don't overwrite your configs - always make a backup! Don't use make install-config and/or make install-webconf and/or make install-webconf-authif you want to manually diff the config files.

 #> make install install-base install-cgis install-html install-init \
    install-commandmode install-idoutils

or decide what you want to upgrade by just typing 'make' which shows all available options. Check your config and restart Icinga.

 #> /etc/init.d/icinga checkconfig
 #> /etc/init.d/icinga restart

That's it!

Icinga 0.8.0 to Icinga 1.14

Archived Logfilename

There was a small misspelling bug in Icinga 0.8.0 resulting in archived logfile names beginning with a capital "I" like in 'Icinga-$date'". This was fixed in version 0.8.1. and newer.

If you experience this problem then please use the following script to fix the file names

 #> cd /usr/local/icinga/var/archives

 for oldfilename in `find ./ -name "Icinga-*"`
 do
   newfilename=`echo $oldfilename | sed -e 's/Icinga/icinga/g'`
   mv $oldfilename $newfilename
 done

Upgrading to Apache 2.4

Starting with Apache 2.4 the default web configuration folder changed from /etc/apache2/conf.d to /etc/apache2/conf-available. If you want to migrate then just move the file(s), enable the configuration(s) and reload the web server:

#> mv /etc/apache2/conf.d/icinga*.conf /etc/apache2/conf-available
#> a2enconf icinga icinga-web
#> service apache2 reload

You have to enable the CGI module as well

#> a2emod cgi

We try to be compatible with the configuration files of the current Nagios 3.x versions so there should be very little you have to do to "upgrade" from Nagios 3.x to Icinga 1.14. Assuming you've already installed Nagios from source code as described in the Nagios quickstart guide, you can install Icinga quite easily.

If you are upgrading from Nagios 3.0.x you might need to install PHP:

Debian / Ubuntu

 #> apt-get install php5 libapache2-mod-php5

Fedora / RedHat

 #> yum install php mod_php

openSuSE / SLES

Use Yast to install the packages php5 and apache2-mod_php5 or use zypper

 #> zypper install php5 apache2-mod_php5

Make sure you have a good backup of your existing Nagios installation and configuration files. If anything goes wrong or doesn't work, this will allow you to rollback to your old version.

Please install Icinga according to the quickstart guide. Please note that

Become the icinga user. Debian/Ubuntu users might use sudo -s icinga.

 $ su -l nagios

Get the latest Icinga version from https://www.icinga.com/

 #> wget https://github.com/Icinga/icinga-core/releases/download/v1.14/icinga-1.14.tar.gz

Extract the tarball and change to the directory just created

 #> tar xzf icinga-1.14.tar.gz
 #> cd icinga-1.14 

Start the Icinga-configure-script with the options you used the last time with Nagios. You'll find the call in the file config.log. Example:

 #> ./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd

Compile the Icinga source code.

 #> make all

Install the programs, documentation, classic web interface and the init script. Your existing config files will not be overwritten.

 #> make cgis 
 #> make install
 #> make install-cgis
 #> make install-init

or simply

 #> make fullinstall

Instead of using "make install-config" copy your configuration files from <Nagios-path>/etc/ to <Icinga-path>/etc/. Before starting Icinga you have to alter some things:

Copy other relevant files from your Nagios installation to the new location. If you are unsure about the path then please have a look at nagios.cfg and/or icinga.cfg.

Verify your configuration files, correct errors (if any) and start Icinga.

 #> /usr/local/icinga/bin/icinga -v /usr/local/icinga/etc/icinga.cfg
 #> /etc/init.d/icinga start

That's it - you're done!

Please keep in mind that

It shouldn't be too difficult to upgrade from Nagios 2.x to Icinga 1.14. The upgrade is essentially the same as what is described above for upgrading from Nagios 3.x releases. You will, however, have to change your configuration files a bit so they work with Icinga 1.14:

Also make sure to read the "What's New" section of the documentation. It describes all the changes that were made to the Icinga code since the latest stable release of Nagios 3.0.6. Quite a bit has changed, so make sure you read it over.

If you currently have an RPM- or Debian/Ubuntu APT package-based installation of Nagios and you would like to transition to installing Icinga from the official source code distribution, here's the basic process you should follow:

Note that different RPMs or APT packages may install Icinga in different ways and in different locations. Make sure you've backed up all your critical Nagios files before removing the original RPM or APT package, so you can revert back if you encounter problems.