Nagios can check anything anyone is willing to write it to check. In other words if there is a way to reap results then Nagios can act on those results whether they be a set of strings, numbers or some combination therein. This two part series goes over setting up a very rudimentry MySQL status page check using common tools found on a BSD-Unix, Unix or Linux system (and it not, generally easy enough to install). This first part goes over requisites, assumptions and the status pages themselves. The second part is the Nagios end of things and of course the “other cool stuff” the creative mind can do with it all.