How to install NAGIOS NRPE plugin under Debian Linux

NRPE allows you to remotely execute Nagios plugins on other Linux/Unix machines. This allows you to monitor remote machine metrics (disk usage, CPU load, etc.). NRPE can also communicate with some of the Windows agent addons, so you can execute scripts and check metrics on remote Windows machines as well. Citation.

You may follow the steps to install NRPE in any of the following ways:

1) Steps (compiling from sources)

First, you should download the latest NRPE version from HERE.

Then, install some required packages:

apt-get update
apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev

Unpack the NRPE addons, configure and install:

cd /opt
tar xvfz nrpe-2.12.tar.gz
cd nrpe-2.12
./configure --enable-command-args
make all
make install-plugin

2) Steps (using apt binaries)

apt-get update
apt-get install nagios-nrpe-plugin

Invocation
NRPE can now be invoked using the following:

/usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nrpe

Another option would be to create a symlink to make the invocation easier:

ln -s /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_nrpe /usr/bin/check_nrpe

Thus:

check_nrpe