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Agent and modules generated by the plugin

The plugin will create one agent per indicated NGINX URL. The agent name is computed by applying an MD5 hash over the URL netloc (host:port), and the alias corresponds to that netloc (for example, 192.168.0.10). Each agent will include the modules obtained by parsing the plain text of the NGINX stub_status endpoint.

The Status module is always created for each agent, with value 1 if the endpoint is reachable, indicating that NGINX is running. If the endpoint is not reachable, the plugin reports the error in the execution information. The remaining numeric fields are included as generic_data modules (instantaneous values) or generic_data_inc modules (incremental counters with per-second rate calculation), following the <prefix><MetricName> format.

The fields available in the NGINX stub_status, which give rise to modules, are:

Status: stub_status endpoint state (1=UP, 0=DOWN) — always monitored (generic_proc).
Active_connections: Total active connections, including waiting ones (generic_data).
Accepts: Accepted connections accumulated since NGINX started (generic_data_inc, per-second rate).
Handled: Handled connections accumulated since NGINX started (generic_data_inc, per-second rate).
          If the value is lower than Accepts, NGINX is dropping traffic.
Requests: Client requests processed accumulated since NGINX started (generic_data_inc, per-second rate).
Reading: Connections reading request headers from the client (generic_data).
Writing: Connections writing a response to the client or processing a request (generic_data).
Waiting: Idle keep-alive connections waiting for the next request (generic_data).

Module type mapping

Metric Pandora FMS module type Description
Status generic_proc Endpoint state (1=reachable, 0=DOWN). Allows configuring critical alerts when the value is 0.
Active_connections generic_data Current active connections (gauge). Includes reading, writing, and waiting connections.
Accepts generic_data_inc Accumulated accepted connections. Pandora FMS automatically calculates the per-second rate.
Handled generic_data_inc Accumulated handled connections. Pandora FMS automatically calculates the per-second rate. If the rate is lower than Accepts, NGINX is dropping connections.
Requests generic_data_inc Accumulated processed requests. Pandora FMS automatically calculates the per-second rate (requests/s).
Reading generic_data Connections in the header-reading state (gauge).
Writing generic_data Connections in the response-writing state (gauge).
Waiting generic_data Idle keep-alive connections (gauge). A high value is normal when keep-alive is enabled.

extra_data markers

The plugin assigns stable identifiers in the extra_data field of each agent and module, following the nginx:<kind>:<identifier> format, to allow later identification from the console, dashboards, extensions, or SQL queries:

  • Agent: nginx:target:<sanitized_url> — identifies the monitored NGINX target.
  • Status module: nginx:metric_status:<sanitized_url>
  • Metric modules: nginx:metric_<metric_name>:<sanitized_url> — for example nginx:metric_active_connections:..., nginx:metric_accepts:..., etc.

These markers do not contain the agent or module name, but the external identifier (the target URL), which is stable and meaningful at the domain level.

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