since charm revision 13 check_ipmi_sensors script can't write to /var/lib/nagios

Suspect this is related to LP:#1866382 (not a duplicate, though). We should consider having the NRPE charm ensure that the dir /var/lib/nagios (nagios user home dir) is owned like so:

drwxr-sr-x 3 nagios nagios 4096 Feb 3 02:04 /var/lib/nagios

Note the setgid, to ensure that cron jobs running as root which drop files in that dir make files that are readable in the dir by the nagios user, even if the machine has been locked down to remove the r-x permission on the dir (see LP:#1904045).

Moving this bug back to New, as this is still occurring. While adding hw-health to a new cloud this week, I observed the same symptoms, with /var/lib/nagios is owned by root, and permissions denied errors.

Running as nagios for the cron job:

$ sudo -u nagios /usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py

yields:

Cannot write output file /var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out.tmp, error [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out.tmp'

and after adding the file and granting permissions, re-running shows this error:

$ sudo -u nagios /usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py
    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py", line 56, in gather_metrics
 write_output_file(output)
    File "/usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py", line 27, in write_output_file
 os.rename(TMP_OUTPUT_FILE, OUTPUT_FILE)
    PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out.tmp' -> '/var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out'

    During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py", line 68, in <module>
 gather_metrics()
    File "/usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py", line 61, in gather_metrics
 write_output_file("UNKNOWN: {}".format(error))
    File "/usr/local/lib/nagios/plugins/cron_ipmi_sensors.py", line 27, in write_output_file
 os.rename(TMP_OUTPUT_FILE, OUTPUT_FILE)

the directory itself also needs write permissions, so in total as a workaround:

$ sudo touch /var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out
$ sudo touch /var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors.out.tmp
$ sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/nagios/ipmi_sensors*
$ sudo chmod 777 /var/lib/nagios

I misunderstood, the fix has been committed, but not yet released (hence me still seeing the issue). I've moved the status back to Fix Committed