op5 Monitor is shipped with many plugins that cover most monitoring needs. But what to do if one of your corporate applications can not be monitored straight out of the box? Often you can find a plugin at www.nagiosexchange.org, and since op5 Monitor and Nagios uses the same plugin format you can often simply download a plugin, put it in /opt/plugins/custom/ and start using it.

However, if you can not find a suitable plugin anywhere you might have to write your own plugin. Since the plugin interface is very straight-forward, anyone with a fair amount of UNIX scripting experience can do this. This article aims to describe the format and walk you through writing a simple plugin. It is intended for the op5 system administrator who wants to extend the capabilities of an op5 System and leave the boss impressed with how precise data can be extracted.