Restarts resetting soft critical states

[Frost, Mark {PBG}]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Andreas Ericsson [mailto:ae at op5.se]
>Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 7:02 AM
>To: Frost, Mark {PBG}
>Cc: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
>Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Restarts resetting soft critical states
>
>On 10/29/2009 08:50 PM, Frost, Mark {PBG} wrote:
>> You think you know an application and every once in a while you get a
>surprise...
>>
>> Both the reporting server and the distributed node share the same
>attributes for retention and soft states:
>>
>> soft_state_dependencies=0
>> passive_host_checks_are_soft=1
>> retain_state_information=1
>> use_retained_program_state=1
>> use_retained_scheduling_info=1
>> retained_host_attribute_mask=0
>> retained_service_attribute_mask=0
>> retained_process_host_attribute_mask=0
>> retained_process_service_attribute_mask=0
>> retained_contact_host_attribute_mask=0
>> retained_contact_service_attribute_mask=0
>>
>> While I would assume the restarts would disrupt Nagios a bit what with
>> having to do start-time tasks again, I would not have expected that it
>>  would "start over" with the status of some checks.
>>
>> What am I missing here?
>>
>
>It seems you haven't grasped how bitmasks work. When you set the mask to
>0,
>you essentially tell it to not let anything through. Set them to -1, or
>leave them at the default values and you'll get the kind of state
>retention
>you want.
>

Thanks, Andreas.  Unfortunately, I'm still puzzled.  The mask values you refer to are already set to the defaults (they're all 0's).  I've never touched those or paid much attention to them until now.

I'm actually confused by 2 aspects of this.  It seems to me that the thing I'm trying to retain across a restart are soft check states (those are what are being reset).  Looking at the MODATTR arguments in include/common.h (3.0.6) I don't see which of those attributes would govern this.  There's the *ENABLED attributes which really aren't changing here (and are retained).  All the other MODATTR's are (it seems to me) not changing in this case either.

The second thing that confuses me here is the verbage used to describe the mask functionality:

        # RETAINED ATTRIBUTE MASKS (ADVANCED FEATURE)
        # The following variables are used to specify specific host and
        # service attributes that should *not* be retained by Nagios during
        # program restarts.

So if MODATTR is set to none, based on the comment doesn't this mean that "NONE" of the attributes are NOT retained?  I.e. all are retained (double-negative)?  The on-line doc for these masks say "By default, all host and service attributes are retained."

I do get masks, I just didn't see how these applied here.

Your help is greatly appreciated.


Thanks

Mark

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Come build with us! The BlackBerry(R) Developer Conference in SF, CA
is the only developer event you need to attend this year. Jumpstart your
developing skills, take BlackBerry mobile applications to market and stay 
ahead of the curve. Join us from November 9 - 12, 2009. Register now!
http://p.sf.net/sfu/devconference
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null