BUG(ish):: Change the scheduled downtime page?

[Carroll, Jim P [Contractor]]

>From the Schedule Downtime page:

[quote]
This command is used to schedule downtime for a particular host. During the
specified downtime, Nagios will not send notifications out about the host.
When the scheduled downtime expires, Nagios will send out notifications for
this host as it normally would. Scheduled downtimes are preserved across
program shutdowns and restarts. Both the start and end times should be
specified in the following format: mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss. If you select the
fixed option, the downtime will be in effect between the start and end times
you specify. If you do not select the fixed option, Nagios will treat this
as "flexible" downtime. Flexible downtime starts when the host goes down or
becomes unreachable (sometime between the start and end times you specified)
and lasts as long as the duration of time you enter. The duration fields do
not apply for fixed dowtime.
[end quote]

In particular, take note of that last sentence.  Or rather, your co-workers
need to take note of that sentence.

As for it being non-intuitive, I'm not sure I agree.  Awkward, perhaps, but
not non-intuitive.  When I first started playing with this feature, I had to
read the fine print a couple times.

Who's to say that I don't want the start window to be 2 hours but the actual
downtime to be 4 hours (non-fixed)?  If for some reason my host isn't
brought down during the initial 2 hours, maybe I don't want it to slip too
far...?

Using your suggestion, then you have a 4 hour window to start the task, and
if you start it at the last minute, you have another 4 hours with which to
complete the task.  Is it asking too much to keep a 4 hour task more or less
within the original target of 4 hours?  Having a 2 hour 'fudge factor'
(sysadmins gathering around, discussing what the plan of attack is, grabbing
a spare disk, or whatever) should be much more than enough time, IMHO.

If there were to be any enhancement to this page, I would opt to have
pull-down menus for the start/end times, down to the minute (the seconds
field should always be '00', since I don't think many of us need to concern
ourselves with sub-minute granularity when it comes to scheduling
downtime... but that's just me).  This would minimize the possibility of
'fat fingering' the schedule.  If it were smart enough, it would also not
permit one to select an end time which preceeds the start time, but that
might require some Javascripting.  *shrug*

If your co-worker is confused on how it works and you are not, perhaps you
should school him in the ways of Nagios.  ;)

jc


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jamin [mailto:jragle at unm.edu]
> Sent: Friday, November 08, 2002 3:04 PM
> To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Cc: nagios-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Nagios-users] BUG(ish):: Change the scheduled downtime page?
> 
> 
> On the Schedule Downtime Page in Nagios, I know you can change the
> date/time lines to reflect how long you want the host to be 
> down, (i.e.  
> 'fixed' time) but if I want to say that it will be down for 4 
> hours, and
> type in the 4 in the bottom field, it still only does the 
> default 2 hours
> unless I uncheck the 'fixed' box.  But even with that it is 
> unclear if 
> notifications will go out after two hours are finished or 
> after 4 hours. 
> 
> The Schedule Downtime interface is really unintuitive and 
> depending on how
> you fill out the fields, is very misleading and/or plain wrong.
> 
> Here is an example of what happened today.  Of course I know 
> how the the
> Schedule Downtime page really works, but other people just 
> starting to use
> it are having problems with some of Nagio'es intricacies.  Basically a
> co-worker wanted the host to be down for 4 hours.  They filled out the
> Duration field to schedule the host down for 4 hours and left 
> the Start
> and End time alone. (Default of 2 hours.)  They unchecked 
> 'fixed' so that
> the hard Start and End times will be ignored.
> 
> This is what we saw
> FROM NAGIOS Host info page::
> 
> 11-08-2002 13:06:06
> This host has been scheduled for downtime starting between 11-08-2002 
> 13:05:19 and 11-08-2002 15:05:19 for a period of 4 hours and 
> 0 minutes. 
> Notifications for the host will not be sent out during that 
> time period.
> 
> 
> As you can see, the actual listed times do not reflect the duration 
> period above.  This just not make sense. 
> 
> Of course, I could have actually changed the hard Start and 
> End times, but
> that is like using a sledge hammer when all you need is a 
> small push.  
> When most people want to schedule downtime they just want to work on
> something starting "now" till however long they think it will 
> take to fix
> the problem.  Having the Duration field on there, people 
> intuitively think
> that, "hey I can just put how long I want nagios to ignore 
> this machine,
> and I'm good.  I don't have to worry about figuring out exact 
> times and
> dates."  The only time where they do worry about the exact 
> Start and End
> periods is for special cases and/or extended times when other 
> people are
> doing maintenance or working on, say, a monitored 
> applications or such.
> 
> I suggest that we modify the page so that we can just say 
> starting from
> "Now" or the default Start field, that we schedule the X 
> number of hours
> and/or minutes of duration from "Now".  Then, on an 
> 'advanced' section we
> can have the currently used down time fields. If we could do some
> re-organization of the scheduled downtime page I think much of this
> confusion can be avoided in the future.
> 
> Of course this is just my idea, I am sure there are better 
> ones out there.
> All I would like is a more intuitive interface to the 
> Schedule Downtime 
> page because the current one is odd.  (Not to mention all the people 
> working here have mis-interpreted the page and 
> unintentionally scheduled 
> shorter downtimes than they have expected. Except me of course. =) )
> 
> I apologize for any duplicate messages and for the length of 
> the message.
> I just hope that this will help nagios mature just that much more.  =)
> Thanks for your time and I am interested in any input along 
> this subject.
> 
> -Jamin
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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