Provided by: monitoring-plugins-contrib_46.20240417ubuntu1_amd64 
NAME
check_imap_receive - connects to and searches an IMAP account for messages
SYNOPSIS
check_imap_receive -vV
check_imap_receive -?
check_imap_receive --help
OPTIONS
--warning <seconds>
Warn if it takes longer than <seconds> to connect to the IMAP server. Default is 15
seconds. Also known as: -w <seconds>
--critical <seconds>
Return a critical status if it takes longer than <seconds> to connect to the IMAP
server. Default is 30 seconds. See also: --capture-critical <messages> Also known as:
-c <seconds>
--timeout <seconds>
Abort with critical status if it takes longer than <seconds> to connect to the IMAP
server. Default is 60 seconds. The difference between timeout and critical is that,
with the default settings, if it takes 45 seconds to connect to the server then the
connection will succeed but the plugin will return CRITICAL because it took longer
than 30 seconds. Also known as: -t <seconds>
--imap-check-interval <seconds>
How long to wait after searching for a matching message before searching again. Only
takes effect if no messages were found. Default is 5 seconds.
--imap-retries <number>
How many times to try searching for a matching message before giving up. If you set
this to 0 then messages will not be searched at all. Setting this to 1 means the
plugin only tries once. Etc. Default is 10 times.
--hostname <server>
Address or name of the IMAP server. Examples: mail.server.com, localhost,
192.168.1.100 Also known as: -H <server>
--port <number>
Service port on the IMAP server. Default is 143. If you use SSL, default is 993. Also
known as: -p <number>
--username <username>
--password <password>
Username and password to use when connecting to IMAP server. Also known as: -U
<username> -P <password>
--mailbox <mailbox>
Use this option to specify the mailbox to search for messages. Default is INBOX. Also
known as: -m <mailbox>
--search <string>
Use this option to filter the messages. Default is not to filter. You may (must) use
this option multiple times in order to create any valid IMAP search criteria. See the
examples and see also http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2060.txt (look for section 6.4.4, the
SEARCH command)
This is the way to find messages matching a given subject:
-s SUBJECT -s "a given subject"
You can use the following technique for any header, including Subject. To find
"Header-Name: some value":
-s HEADER -s Header-Name -s "some value"
Modern IMAP servers that support rfc5032 extensions allow you to search for messages
older or younger than a number of seconds. So to find messages received in the past
hour, you can do:
-s YOUNGER -s 3600
Or to find messages received more than 5 minutes ago, you can do:
-s OLDER -s 300
Also known as: -s <string>
--download
--nodownload
This option causes all messages in the specified mailbox to be downloaded from the
server and searched locally. See --download-max if you only want to download a few
messages. Currently only the following RFC 2060 search criteria are supported: TEXT,
BODY, SUBJECT, HEADER, NOT, OR, SENTBEFORE, SENTON, SENTSINCE.
Requires Email::Simple to be installed. It is available on CPAN.
This option may be particularly useful to you if your mail server is slow to index
messages (like Exchange 2003), causing the plugin not to find them with IMAP SEARCH
even though they are in the inbox.
It's also useful if you're searching for messages that have been on the server for a
specified amount of time, like some minutes or hours, because the standard IMAP search
function only allows whole dates. For this, use the standard search keywords but you
can specify either just a date like in RFC 2060 or a date and a time.
If you use SENTBEFORE, SENTON, or SENTSINCE, you must have Date::Manip installed on
your system.
--download-max
Limits the number of messages downloaded from the server when the --download option is
used. Default is to download and search all messages.
--search-critical-min <messages>
This option will trigger a CRITICAL status if the number of messages found by the
search criteria is below the given number. Use in conjunction with --search.
This parameter defaults to 1 so that if no messages are found, the plugin will exit
with a CRITICAL status.
If you want the original behavior where the plugin exits with a WARNING status when no
messages are found, set this parameter to 0.
--search-critical-max <messages>
This option will trigger a CRITICAL status if the number of messages found by the
search criteria is above the given number. Use in conjunction with --search.
This parameter defaults to -1 meaning it's disabled. If you set it to 10, the plugin
will exit with CRITICAL if it finds 11 messages. If you set it to 1, the plugin will
exit with CRITICAL if it finds any more than 1 message. If you set it to 0, the plugin
will exit with CRITICAL if it finds any messages at all. If you set it to -1 it will
be disabled.
--search-warning-min <messages>
This option will trigger a WARNING status if the number of messages found by the
search criteria is below the given number. Use in conjunction with --search.
This parameter defaults to 1 so that if no messages are found, the plugin will exit
with a WARNING status.
If you want to suppress the original behavior where the plugin exits with a WARNING
status when no messages are found, set this parameter to 0. When this parameter is 0,
it means that you expect the mailbox not to have any messages.
--search-warning-max <messages>
This option will trigger a WARNING status if the number of messages found by the
search criteria is above the given number. Use in conjunction with --search.
This parameter defaults to -1 meaning it's disabled. If you set it to 10, the plugin
will exit with WARNING if it finds 11 messages. If you set it to 1, the plugin will
exit with WARNING if it finds any more than 1 message. If you set it to 0, the plugin
will exit with WARNING if it finds any messages at all. If you set it to -1 it will be
disabled.
--capture-max <regexp>
In addition to specifying search arguments to filter the emails in the IMAP account,
you can specify a "capture-max" regexp argument and the eligible emails (found with
search arguments) will be compared to each other and the OK line will have the highest
captured value.
The regexp is expected to capture a numeric value.
--capture-min <regexp>
In addition to specifying search arguments to filter the emails in the IMAP account,
you can specify a "capture-min" regexp argument and the eligible emails (found with
search arguments) will be compared to each other and the OK line will have the lowest
captured value.
The regexp is expected to capture a numeric value.
--delete
--nodelete
Use the delete option to delete messages that matched the search criteria. This is
useful for preventing the mailbox from filling up with automated messages (from the
check_smtp_send plugin, for example). THE DELETE OPTION IS TURNED *ON* BY DEFAULT, in
order to preserve compatibility with an earlier version.
Use the nodelete option to turn off the delete option.
--nodelete-captured
If you use both the capture-max and delete arguments, you can also use the nodelete-
captured argument to specify that the email with the highest captured value should not
be deleted. This leaves it available for comparison the next time this plugin runs.
If you do not use the delete option, this option has no effect.
--ssl
--nossl
Enable SSL protocol. Requires IO::Socket::SSL.
Using this option automatically changes the default port from 143 to 993. You can
still override this from the command line using the --port option.
Use the nossl option to turn off the ssl option.
--ssl-ca-file
Use this to verify the server SSL certificate against a local .pem file. You'll need
to specify the path to the .pem file as the parameter.
You can use the imap_ssl_cert utility included in this distribution to connect to your
IMAP server and save its SSL certificates into your .pem file. Usage is like this:
imap_ssl_cert -H imap.server.com > ca_file.pem
Only applicable when --ssl option is enabled.
--template
--notemplate
Enable (or disable) processing of IMAP search parameters. Requires Text::Template and
Date::Manip.
Use this option to apply special processing to IMAP search parameters that allows you
to use the results of arbitrary computations as the parameter values. For example, you
can use this feature to search for message received up to 4 hours ago.
Modern IMAP servers that support rfc5032 extensions allow searching with the YOUNGER
and OLDER criteria so a message received up to 4 hours ago is -s YOUNGER -s 14400. But
if your mail server doesn't support that, you could use the --template option to get
similar functionality.
When you enable the --template option, each parameter you pass to the -s option is
parsed by Text::Template. See the Text::Template manual for more information, but in
general any expression written in Perl will work.
A convenience function called rfc2822dateHeader is provided to you so you can easily
compute properly formatted dates for use as search parameters. The rfc2822date
function can take one or two parameters itself: the date to format and an optional
offset. To use the current time as a search parameter, you can write this:
$ check_imap_receive ... --template -s HEADER -s Delivery-Date -s '{rfc2822dateHeader("now")}'
The output of {rfc2822dateHeader("now")} looks like this: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:44:03
-0700 and is suitable for use with a date header, like HEADER Delivery-Date.
To use a time in the past relative to the current time or day, you can use a second
convenience function called rfc2822date and write this:
$ check_imap_receive ... --template -s SENTSINCE -s '{rfc2822date("now","-1 day")}'
The output of {rfc2822date("now","-1 day")} looks like this: 29-Sep-2009 and is
suitable for use with BEFORE, ON, SENTBEFORE, SENTON, SENTSINCE, and SINCE.
I have seen some email clients use a different format in the Date field, like
September 17, 2009 9:46:51 AM PDT. To specify an arbitrary format like this one,
write this:
$ check_imap_receive ... --template -s HEADER -s Delivery-Date -s '{date("%B %e, %Y %i:%M:%S %p %Z","now","-4 hours")}'
You can use BEFORE, ON, SENTBEFORE, SENTON, SENTSINCE, or SINCE to search for messages
that arrived on, before, or after a given day but not on, before, or after a specific
time on that day.
To search for messages that arrived on, before, or after a specific time you have to
use the Delivery-Date or another date field, like with -s HEADER -s Delivery-Date in
the example above.
See the Date::Manip manual for more information on the allowed expressions for date
and delta strings.
--hires
Use the Time::HiRes module to measure time, if available.
--verbose
Display additional information. Useful for troubleshooting. Use together with
--version to see the default warning and critical timeout values.
If the selected mailbox was not found, you can use verbosity level 3 (-vvv) to display
a list of all available mailboxes on the server.
Also known as: -v
--version
Display plugin version and exit. Also known as: -V
--help
Display this documentation and exit. Does not work in the ePN version. Also known as:
-h
--usage
Display a short usage instruction and exit.
EXAMPLES
Report how many emails are in the mailbox
$ check_imap_receive -H mail.server.net --username mailuser --password mailpass
-s ALL --nodelete
IMAP RECEIVE OK - 1 seconds, 7 found
Report the email with the highest value
Suppose your mailbox has some emails from an automated script and that a message from this
script typically looks like this (abbreviated):
To: mailuser@server.net
From: autoscript@server.net
Subject: Results of Autoscript
Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2005 08:30:40 -0800
Message-ID: <auto-000000992528@server.net>
Homeruns 5
And further suppose that you are interested in reporting the message that has the highest
number of home runs, and also to leave this message in the mailbox for future checks, but
remove the other matching messages with lesser values:
$ check_imap_receive -H mail.server.net --username mailuser --password mailpass
-s SUBJECT -s "Results of Autoscript" --capture-max "Homeruns (\d+)" --nodelete-captured
IMAP RECEIVE OK - 1 seconds, 3 found, 1 captured, 5 max, 2 deleted
Troubleshoot your search parameters
Add the --nodelete and --imap-retries=1 parameters to your command line.
EXIT CODES
Complies with the Nagios plug-in specification:
0 OK The plugin was able to check the service and it appeared to be
functioning properly
1 Warning The plugin was able to check the service, but it appeared to be
above some "warning" threshold or did not appear to be working properly
2 Critical The plugin detected that either the service was not running or it was
above some "critical" threshold
3 Unknown Invalid command line arguments were supplied to the plugin or the
plugin was unable to check the status of the given hosts/service
NAGIOS PLUGIN NOTES
Nagios plugin reference: http://nagiosplug.sourceforge.net/developer-guidelines.html
This plugin does NOT use Nagios DEFAULT_SOCKET_TIMEOUT (provided by utils.pm as $TIMEOUT)
because the path to utils.pm must be specified completely in this program and forces users
to edit the source code if their install location is different (if they realize this is
the problem). You can view the default timeout for this module by using the --verbose and
--version options together. The short form is -vV.
Other than that, it attempts to follow published guidelines for Nagios plugins.
SEE ALSO
http://nagios.org/ http://search.cpan.org/~djkernen/Mail-IMAPClient-2.2.9/IMAPClient.pod
http://search.cpan.org/~markov/Mail-IMAPClient-3.00/lib/Mail/IMAPClient.pod
CHANGES
Wed Oct 29 11:00:00 PST 2005
+ version 0.1
Wed Nov 9 09:53:32 PST 2005
+ added delete/nodelete option. deleting found messages is still default behavior.
+ added capture-max option
+ added nodelete-captured option
+ added mailbox option
+ added eval/alarm block to implement -c option
+ now using an inline PluginReport package to generate the report
+ copyright notice and GNU GPL
+ version 0.2
Thu Apr 20 14:00:00 CET 2006 (by Johan Nilsson <johann (at) axis.com>)
+ version 0.2.1
+ added support for multiple polls of imap-server, with specified intervals
Tue Apr 24 21:17:53 PDT 2007
+ now there is an alternate version (same but without embedded perl POD) that is compatible with the new new embedded-perl Nagios feature
+ added patch from Benjamin Ritcey <ben@ritcey.com> for SSL support on machines that have an SSL-enabled
+ version 0.2.3
Fri Apr 27 18:56:50 PDT 2007
+ fixed problem that "Invalid search parameters" was not printed because of missing newline to flush it
+ warnings and critical errors now try to append error messages received from the IMAP client
+ changed connection error to display timeout only if timeout was the error
+ documentation now mentions every command-line option accepted by the plugin, including abbreviations
+ added abbreviations U for username, P for password, m for mailbox
+ fixed bug that imap-check-interval applied even after the last try (imap-retries) when it was not necessary
+ the IMAP expunge command is not sent unless at least one message is deleted
+ fixed bug that the "no messages" warning was printed even if some messages were found
+ version 0.3
Sun Oct 21 14:08:07 PDT 2007
+ added port info to the "could not connect" error message
+ fixed bug that occurred when using --ssl --port 143 which caused port to remain at the default 993 imap/ssl port
+ added clarity shortcuts --search-subject and --search-header
+ port is no longer a required option. defaults to 143 for regular IMAP and 993 for IMAP/SSL
+ version 0.3.1
Sun Oct 21 20:41:56 PDT 2007
+ reworked ssl support to use IO::Socket::SSL instead of the convenience method Mail::IMAPClient->Ssl (which is not included in the standard Mail::IMAPClient package)
+ removed clarity shortcuts (bad idea, code bloat)
+ version 0.4
Tue Dec 4 07:05:27 PST 2007
+ added version check to _read_line workaround for SSL-related bug in Mail::IMAPClient version 2.2.9 ; newer versions fixed the bug
+ added --usage option because the official nagios plugins have both --help and --usage
+ added --timeout option to match the official nagios plugins
+ fixed some minor pod formatting issues for perldoc
+ version 0.4.1
Sat Dec 15 07:39:59 PST 2007
+ improved compatibility with Nagios embedded perl (ePN)
+ version 0.4.2
Mon Jan 7 21:35:23 PST 2008
+ changed version check for Mail::IMAPClient version 2.2.9 to use string comparison le "2.2.9"
+ fixed bug where script was dying on socket->autoflush when socket does not exist because autoflush was being called before checking the socket object
+ version 0.4.3
Mon Feb 11 19:13:38 PST 2008
+ fixed a bug for embedded perl version, variable "%status" will not stay shared in load_modules
+ version 0.4.4
Mon May 26 08:33:27 PDT 2008
+ fixed a bug for number captured, it now reflects number of messages captured instead of always returning "1"
+ added --capture-min option to complement --capture-max
+ added --search-critical-min to trigger a CRITICAL alert if number of messages found is less than argument, with default 1.
+ fixed warning and critical messages to use "more than" or "less than" instead of the angle brackets, to make them more web friendly
+ version 0.5
Wed Jul 2 14:59:05 PDT 2008
+ fixed a bug for not finding a message after the first try, by reselecting the mailbox before each search
+ version 0.5.1
Sat Dec 13 08:57:29 PST 2008
+ added --download option to allow local searching of messages (useful if your server has an index that handles searching but it takes a while before new emails show up and you want immediate results), supports only the TEXT, BODY, SUBJECT, and HEADER search keys
+ added --download-max option to set a limit on number of messages downloaded with --download
+ version 0.6.0
Wed Sep 30 23:25:33 PDT 2009
+ fixed --download-max option (was incorrectly looking for --download_max). currently both will work, in the future only --download-max will work
+ added --template option to allow arbitrary substitutions for search parameters, and provided three convenience functions for working with dates
+ added date search criteria to the --download option: SENTBEFORE, SENTON, and SENTSINCE which check the Date header and allow hours and minutes in addition to dates (whereas the IMAP standard only allows dates)
+ added --search-critical-max to trigger a CRITICAL alert if number of messages found is more than argument, disabled by default.
+ fixed a bug in --download --search where messages would match even though they failed the search criteria
+ changed behavior of --download-max to look at the most recent messages first (hopefully); the IMAP protocol doesn't guarantee the order that the messages are returned but I observed that many mail servers return them in chronological order; so now --download-max reverses the order to look at the newer messages first
+ added performance data for use with PNP4Nagios!
+ version 0.7.0
Fri Oct 2 15:22:00 PDT 2009
+ added --search-warning-max and --search-warning-min to trigger a WARNING alert if number of messages is more than or less than the specified number.
+ fixed --download option not to fail with CRITICAL if mailbox is empty; now this can be configured with --search-warning-min or --search-critical-min
+ version 0.7.1
Sat Nov 21 18:27:17 PST 2009
+ fixed problem with using --download option on certain mail servers by turning on the IgnoreSizeErrors feature in IMAPClient
+ added --peek option to prevent marking messages as seen
+ version 0.7.2
Tue Jan 5 12:13:53 PST 2010
+ added error message and exit with unknown status when an unrecognized IMAP search criteria is encountered by the --download --search option
Wed May 5 11:14:51 PDT 2010
+ added mailbox list when mailbox is not found and verbose level 3 is on (-vvv)
+ version 0.7.3
Tue Mar 8 18:58:14 AST 2011
+ updated documentation for --search and --template to mention rfc5032 extensions (thanks to Stuart Henderson)
Fri May 6 08:35:09 AST 2011
+ added --hires option to enable use of Time::Hires if available
+ version 0.7.4
Fri Nov 11 01:51:40 AST 2011
+ added --ssl-ca-file option to allow verifying the server certificate against a local .pem file (thanks to Alexandre Bezroutchko)
+ added imap_ssl_cert.pl utility (not in this file) to conveniently save the server's SSL certificates into a local .pem file
+ version 0.7.5
AUTHOR
Jonathan Buhacoff <jonathan@buhacoff.net>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright (C) 2005-2011 Jonathan Buhacoff
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt