Hi,

I have made a nagios config file to monitor one of our servers which runs an instance of MS SQL. When verifying the config file i get the following message:

• The description string for service MSSQL$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS on host 'Test' contains one or more illegal characters.

The Nagios documentation says that the $-sign is an illegal character, but it does not say how to solve this issue (or i accidentally skipped that part).

I tried the following methods to escape the illegal character:

• 'MSSQL$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS'

• 'MSSQL$$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS'

• MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS

• MSSQL"$$"MCAFEEDLPREPORTS

All help to solve this little inconvenience will be appreciated.

Escape the dollar sign AND put quotes around the whole thing.

"MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS"

This works for me on the services where I have MSSQL$...

I tried "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS" but it does not do the trick. Still got the same error.

Get the entire line from your services.cfg that contains the MSSQL$ and post it.

It should start with a command. Verify that command is defined appropriately (e.g. in checkcommands.cfg or commands.cfg). In mine I'm passing it in as $ARG$. Post that as well.

Below is the only part in the cfg file i use to monitor the sql server. I have nothing configured in the command.cfg or any other cfg file.

define service{
use generic-service
host_name TEST
service_description "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS"
check_command check_nt!SERVICESTATE!-d SHOWALL -l "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS"
}

There are default things configured in commands.cfg e.g.:
# 'check_nt' command definition
When you do "check_command check_nt" you're telling it to get the check_nt definition from the commands.cfg (later Nagios) or check_commands.cfg (earlier Nagios).

Your definition in whatever config you're using (services.cfg, windows.cfg?) is:
Which is calling the check_nt defined in commands.cfg.

We do it slightly different here because we defined a check_nt_service command in commands.cfg so the "SERVICESTATE!-d SHOWALL -l" is there rather than services.cfg and in services.cfg we just call check_nt_service with the argument in quotes and escaped as I said.

In your syntax $ARG2$ is actually -d SHOWALL -l "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS" so it might be worthwhile to remove the quotes I suggested and add quotes around all of it so it becomes:
"-d SHOWALL -l MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS"
It might also be necessary to put quotes around the whole thing and within like:
"-d SHOWALL -l "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS""

I verified that my command.cfg has an entry for check_nt (it looks the same as your include check_nt).

I both used "-d SHOWALL -l MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS" and "-d SHOWALL -l "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS"" as the second argument, but still receive the same error.

After that i changed service_description "MSSQL\$MCAFEEDLPREPORTS" to service_description MSSQLMCAFEEDLPREPORTS and checked for configuration errors again. This time i did not receive any errors or warnings. It looks like service_description is causing the error.

Eventually got it working. I my case i had to do the following:
-i removed the illegal character ($-sign) in the service_description line
-i change the check_nt line to: check_command check_nt!SERVICESTATE!-d SHOWALL -l MSSQL"$$"MCAFEEDLPREPORTS

Thanks for posting your solution.

On checking mine I saw I never had a $ in the service description so it never even occurred to me that this might be your problem.