Identify Web Server User

You're probably going to want to issue external commands (like acknowledgements and scheduled downtime) from the web interface. To do so, you need to identify the user your web server runs as (typically apache, although this may differ on your system). This setting is found in your web server configuration file. The following command can be used to quickly determine what user Apache is running as (paths may differ on your system):

grep "^User" /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Add Command File Group

Next we're going to create a new group whose members include the user your web server is running as and the user Nagios is running as. Let's say we call this new group 'nagcmd' (you can name it differently if you wish). On RedHat Linux you can use the following command to add a new group (other systems may differ):

/usr/sbin/groupadd nagcmd

Next, add the users that your web server and Nagios run as to the newly created group with the following commands (I'll assume apache and nagios are the respective users):

/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd apache
/usr/sbin/usermod -G nagcmd nagios