# Malformed plugin output in Icinga Web 2

**URL:** <https://community.icinga.com/t/malformed-plugin-output-in-icinga-web-2/5801>\
**Category:** Service Monitoring\
**Tags:** plugins, icingaweb2\
**Created:** [October 16, 2020, 6:35am UTC](https://community.icinga.com/t/malformed-plugin-output-in-icinga-web-2/5801 "2020-10-16T06:35:02Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![br0tkasten](https://community.icinga.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@br0tkasten](https://community.icinga.com/u/br0tkasten)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2020, 6:35am UTC](https://community.icinga.com/t/malformed-plugin-output-in-icinga-web-2/5801/1 "2020-10-16T06:35:02Z")

</div>

Hello there,

we have trouble displaying metrics from a (self developed) plugin monitoring BGP peers from FRR ([https://frrouting.org](https://frrouting.org)).

(simplified) Plugin Output

```auto
FRR OK | 'DEAD:BEEF::6_uptime'=239402;; 'DEAD:BEEF::6_state'=6;; '127.0.0.1_uptime'=239402;; '127.0.0.1_state'=6;;

```

While the plugins output on the command line looks fine, the performance data’s labels in Icinga Web 2 are malformed:

![Screenshot 2020-10-16 at 08.23.55](https://community.icinga.com/uploads/default/original/2X/f/f077164ded45a18679f4824335072d4c09f4e958.png)

We could locate the issue in the `::6` in the label of the IPv6 peer metrics.  
When replacing `::` with `:` everything looks fine.  
When monitoring only IPv6 or IPv4 peer information output is normal, too.

Did we discover a bug or is this expected behaviour?  
Is there a way to escape the plugin’s output?

```auto
Icinga Web 2 Version 2.8.2 (Git commit 8a89839af94a247ee2149b2336c73b8251b477c0)

```

```auto
# icinga2 --version
icinga2 - The Icinga 2 network monitoring daemon (version: 2.12.0-1)

Copyright (c) 2012-2020 Icinga GmbH (https://icinga.com/)
License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl2.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

System information:
  Platform: CentOS Linux
  Platform version: 7 (Core)
  Kernel: Linux
  Kernel version: 3.10.0-1127.19.1.el7.x86_64
  Architecture: x86_64

Build information:
  Compiler: GNU 4.8.5
  Build host: runner-hh8q3bz2-project-322-concurrent-0
  OpenSSL version: OpenSSL 1.0.2k-fips 26 Jan 2017

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![nilmerg](https://community.icinga.com/user_avatar/community.icinga.com/nilmerg/32/277_2.png) [@nilmerg](https://community.icinga.com/u/nilmerg)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://community.icinga.com/t/malformed-plugin-output-in-icinga-web-2/5801/2 "2020-10-16T07:53:16Z")

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Hi,

just tried this myself and took a look what Icinga Web 2 parses there and how. Because to my knowledge (double) colons are not a part of the syntax.

So I noticed that this is already what gets written to the IDO. Icinga 2 seems to mangle the performance data already so that `DEAD:BEEF::` is put in front of all other perfdata labels as well.

Maybe @nhilverling can give an insight why that’s the case or if it’s even a bug?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![br0tkasten](https://community.icinga.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/aeb1de/32.png) [@br0tkasten](https://community.icinga.com/u/br0tkasten)\
**Post date:** [October 19, 2020, 2:29pm UTC](https://community.icinga.com/t/malformed-plugin-output-in-icinga-web-2/5801/3 "2020-10-19T14:29:34Z")

</div>

Hi Johannes,

thank you for verifying the issue and your hint regarding IDO.  
According to [https://icinga.com/docs/icinga2/latest/doc/14-features/](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga2/latest/doc/14-features/) `::` seems to be a format extension introduced for multi performance labels (cfg. [https://github.com/flackem/check\_multi/blob/next/doc/configuration/performance.md](https://github.com/flackem/check_multi/blob/next/doc/configuration/performance.md))

As a workaround for this issue we expand IPv6 addresses =\> eliminating all `::`.