Different notifications depending on warning?

[Israel Brewster]

I don't know if this is possible, but is there any way to make nagios  
send different alerts (or, rather not send alerts) depending on what  
exactly a warning state is? My understanding is that nagios only looks  
at the return code, not the status text, so this shouldn't be  
possible, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask.

The problem I am trying to solve is the following: I am monitoring a  
number of printers via SNMP, and there are a number of conditions that  
will trigger a "WARNING" status on the printer: Out of paper, open  
front cover, low toner, etc. Some of these, such as out of paper, can  
be and typically are quickly and easily solved by the end user, and as  
such there is no point in e-mailing us about it, at least not until it  
has been empty for a while. However, it should still show up as a  
warning in nagios, because there have been situations where someone is  
being unable to print to a remote printer, and it turns out it is  
because no one in the remote location noticed that it was out. Other  
"WARNING" situations we need to be notified about immediately, such as  
(primarily) low toner, in which case we need to make sure we have a  
replacement available, and perhaps even sent out, if the location is  
remote.

I suppose I could write a plugin that looks at the status text and  
"upgrades" certain warnings, such as low toner, to critical status,  
but this would be problematic as well, because we would then loose the  
distinction between "low toner", which just means we need to make sure  
we have more, and "toner empty", which means we need to go replace it.  
So is there a good solution to this dilemma that I am missing? Thanks.

-----------------------------------------------
Israel Brewster
Computer Support Technician
Frontier Flying Service Inc.
5245 Airport Industrial Rd
Fairbanks, AK 99709
(907) 450-7250 x293
-----------------------------------------------



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