Adding hosts to Nagios can sometimes be a pain, so this should help.
This script takes input from a .csv file that can be made in a program such as Microsoft Excel. This is useful for adding a large number of hosts at a time.
First, create the main script, make sure this is not in the same directory as your production Nagios configuration, as it will overwrite any existing hosts.cfg file in the same directory:

nagios_import.sh

#!/bin/sh
# nagios_import.sh

file=$1
cat $file | while read line;
do
echo "${line}"
NAME=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f1`
ALIAS=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f2`
DISNAME=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f3`
IP=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f4`
GROUP=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f5`
CHECK=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f6`
CONTACT=`echo ${line} | cut -d\; -f7`

cat hosts.template | sed -e "s/TEMP_NAME/$NAME/" -e "s/TEMP_ALIAS/$ALIAS/" -e "s/TEMP_DISNAME/$DISNAME/" -e "s/TEMP_IP/$IP/" -e "s/TEMP_GROUP/$GROUP/" -e "s/TEMP_CHECK/$CHECK/" -e "s/TEMP_CONTACT/$CONTACT/" >> hosts.cfg
done

We also need a template for our output file:

hosts.template

###############################################################################

define host {
 host_name TEMP_NAME
 alias TEMP_ALIAS
 display_name TEMP_DISNAME
 address TEMP_IP
 hostgroups TEMP_GROUP
 check_command TEMP_CHECK
 initial_state o
 max_check_attempts 3
 check_interval 5
 retry_interval 1
 active_checks_enabled 1
 passive_checks_enabled 0
 check_period 24x7
 check_freshness 1
 process_perf_data 1
 contact_groups TEMP_CONTACT
 notification_interval 15
 notification_period 24x7
 notification_options d,u,r
 notifications_enabled 1
 register 1
}

###############################################################################

.

input.csv (Example)

NAME;ALIAS;DISNAME;IP;HOSTGROUP;CHECK;CONTACT
ALMBH02;Altiris, div. beheer tools;ALMBH02;172.20.4.244;;check-host-alive;Standby_pool2
ALMSANS01;Storageworks 8/8 SANswitch;ALMSANS01;172.20.4.13;;check-host-alive;Standby_pool2
ALMSANS02;Storageworks 8/8 SANswitch;ALMSANS02;172.20.4.14;;check-host-alive;Standby_pool2

  Now we can add our hosts in a spreadsheet and generate the hosts.cfg file simply by running:

./nagios_import.sh input.csv

This will parse the information from your input.csv file and write it to the hosts.cfg file based on our hosts.template file.

This data can then be imported to Nagios by copying the file (hosts.cfg in the current dirtectory) to the “/etc/nagios/” directory and importing the file using NagiosQL: