Werk #18979: Fix intermittent STALE services from cached section timeout in UNIX agents

Component	Checks & agents
Title	Fix intermittent STALE services from cached section timeout in UNIX agents
Date	Mar 10, 2026
Level	Trivial Change
Class	Bug Fix
Compatibility	Compatible - no manual interaction needed
Checkmk versions & editions	2.6.0b1 Not yet released Checkmk Raw (CRE), Checkmk Enterprise (CEE), Checkmk Cloud (CCE), Checkmk MSP (CME) 2.5.0b1 Not yet released Checkmk Raw (CRE), Checkmk Enterprise (CEE), Checkmk Cloud (CCE), Checkmk MSP (CME) 2.4.0p24 Not yet released Checkmk Raw (CRE), Checkmk Enterprise (CEE), Checkmk Cloud (CCE), Checkmk MSP (CME) 2.3.0p45 Not yet released Checkmk Raw (CRE), Checkmk Enterprise (CEE), Checkmk Cloud (CCE), Checkmk MSP (CME)

Previously, the UNIX agent applied a client-side timeout to cached plugin sections, silently dropping them once they exceeded a fixed age threshold. The agent had no way to know the server's configured check interval — so if your check interval was longer than this threshold, services like NTP Time could intermittently go STALE.

This has been fixed. Cached sections are now always forwarded to the server, which already determines staleness from the cached(mtime, maxage) annotation. No configuration changes are required.

Affected agents: Linux, AIX, FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenWRT.

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