OT. How the other half gets by. Tales of a famous brand.

[Stanley Hopcroft]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

<off topic>
This is a largely off topic piece devoted to Nagios advocacy by 
focussing on one aspect of a famous brand that rhymes with 'Snivel'.

Those unlucky enough not to be running Nagios have unusual challenges in 
the area of Notification, Acknowledgement, and Escalation.

Out of the box, there may be 'rules' that provide notification for any
'even't of sufficient severity. The rule runs a script that either
Emails or 'pages' a contact that is configured in the script.

Escalations are processed in the same way according to a threshold 
defined in the rule.

There seems to be :-

. no means of configuring the threshold on an 'event' (roughly similar 
to 'service' basis) on a per event basis

. no per service/per host notification disposition

. no contact groups

. no means of disabling service checks and or notifications (there is an 
'acknowledgement' function but how it is interpreted is up to the 
individual rule that processes the event).

The point of this is not particuarly to slag this product but simply to
applaud the conception and implementation of Nagios notification
processingthat; it provides _all of these useful if not indespensable
functions - right out of the box with only configuration to complete.

Mr Galstand should take heart from how badly others do this. 

Lastly, a note about 'rules'. These 'rules' are used to tailor 
processing by reacting to 'events' (a message representing a report from 
a distributed monitor). Rules are encoded in a 'rule language' that is 
verbose. This rule language compiles to Prolog and the Prolog version of 
the rules is compiled to a partic object target.

Rules can 

1 fail 'rule language' compilation

2 fail Prolog compilation

3 fail to do what one wants because of the nature of Prolog (eg calling 
a function with the wrong siganature is _not_ a compile time error, it 
is an attempt to invoke a 'rule or fact' that is not found in the Prolog 
'knowledge base', likewise the name of the function. When Prlog fails to 
find a fact/rule it backtracks ...)

There is much fun and amusement of the beating the head against the wall 
kind in this activity. Whether there is also value remains to be seen.

BTW, you know a Prolog text by the high proportion of '_' and ',' 
symbols eg 

'get_global_var('Mode', _hostname, _host_mode),'

</off topic>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Hopcroft
------------------------------------------------------------------------

'...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes
me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee...'

from Meditation 17, J Donne.


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