NAL should be used like a web-based Alarm Handler. It is based on a simple plug-in inserted in NAGIOS. Therefore that should be used to monitor the EPICS network (it means PVs status). The plug-in relized to do that is : check_caget.sh you can download it _and_ a complete minimal Nagios setup (/etc/nagios) from  here.

The check_caget.sh plugin is a shell script that does a caget. Ralph Lange made a slightly modified version that he is using at Bessy. It is an active check, and it does the whole series of name resolution, connect, get, disconnect.

Debbie Quoack with Andrew Johnson (APS) uses a daemon written in perl, that sets up monitors to EPICS PVs and relays changes in the monitored values as passive test results to Nagios.

Both approaches are valid and have their use cases. The caget does not work for 10.000s of channels, while the daemon does not check name resolution and connection setup. (IOCs running low on free memory will serve existing connections while not allowing new clients to connect.)

Publications:

• LivEPICS: An EPICS Linux Live CD NAGIOS Equipped
• Infrastructure Monitoring System for Advance Photon Source

Installation details:

A huge number of guides are present on web to help to install and setup Nagios, anyway, I've realized a HOWTO to install  and setup NAL starting from a linux box Fedora Core 7 equipped.

Last, but not least if you are in hurry to try this: the last version of LivEPICS CD has a Nagios server set-up ready to use in order to monitor the simple EPICS "example" application. A HOWTO guide is avilable to play with NAL using LivEPICS.fc5 NAGIOS v1.0

• For example get qemu from here: http://dag.wieers.com/packages/qemu. Take the rpm for your distro.
• How to run qemu (see also man qemu):

  qemu -m 256 -cdrom livecd.iso
  qemu -m 256 -full-screen -cdrom livecd.iso
  

• Escape full screen in qemu with ALT+CTRL+f
• Or alternatively you can use VMware Player or VMware Server