In this recipe, you'll learn how to use the Host and Service State Trends reporting tool on a host or service to show a graph of states over some fixed period of time. This can be useful to determine not only the overall availability, perhaps to meet the terms of a service-level agreement, but also to ascertain whether there are certain intervals or consistent times that the host enters a state that is not OK. It's a good way to look for patterns in the downtime of your hosts.
You will need access to the Nagios Core web interface and permission to run commands from the CGIs. The sample configuration installed by following the Quick Start Guide provides the nagiosadmin user all the necessary privileges when authenticated via HTTP.
If you find that you don't have this privilege, check the authorized_for_all_services and authorized_for_all_hosts directives in /usr/local/nagios/etc/cgi.cfg and include your username in both, for example, tom:
authorized_for_all_services...
