## <a id="external-commands"></a> External Commands

Icinga 2 provides an external command pipe for processing commands
triggering specific actions (for example rescheduling a service check
through the web interface).

In order to enable the `ExternalCommandListener` configuration use the
following command and restart Icinga 2 afterwards:

    # icinga2-enable-feature command

Icinga 2 creates the command pipe file as `/var/run/icinga2/cmd/icinga2.cmd`
using the default configuration.

Web interfaces and other Icinga addons are able to send commands to
Icinga 2 through the external command pipe, for example for rescheduling
a forced service check:

    # /bin/echo "[`date +%s`] SCHEDULE_FORCED_SVC_CHECK;localhost;ping4;`date +%s`" >> /var/run/icinga2/cmd/icinga2.cmd

    # tail -f /var/log/messages

    Oct 17 15:01:25 icinga-server icinga2: Executing external command: [1382014885] SCHEDULE_FORCED_SVC_CHECK;localhost;ping4;1382014885
    Oct 17 15:01:25 icinga-server icinga2: Rescheduling next check for service 'ping4'

By default the command pipe file is owned by the group `icingacmd` with read/write
permissions. Add your webserver's user to the group `icingacmd` to
enable sending commands to Icinga 2 through your web interface:

    # usermod -G -a icingacmd www-data

Debian packages use `nagios` as the default user and group name. Therefore change `icingacmd` to
`nagios`.

### <a id="external-command-list"></a> External Command List

A list of currently supported external commands can be found on the
[Icinga Wiki](https://wiki.icinga.org/display/icinga2/External+Commands).
Detailed information on the commands and their required parameters can be found
on the [Icinga 1.x documentation](http://docs.icinga.org/latest/en/extcommands2.html).