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spong-message



NAME

spong-message - send out alerts when there is a problem

SYNOPSIS

spong-message [--debug] [--file filename | --message "detailed message text"] color host service time message

spong-message [--debug] --color|--status color --host hostname --service service --time time --summary "summary message text" [--file filename | --message "detailed message text"]

DESCRIPTION

This program is called by the the spong-server entry elsewhere in this document to send out alerts. The the spong-server entry elsewhere in this document only makes a quick determination for send out alerts. It's only criteria is a change in status of a service. The spong-message make a more thorough determination of transmitting the alerts according to the message rules defined in the the spong.message manpage configuration file. spong-message also has throttling mechanisms to prevent an excessive number of messages from being send within a short amount of time.

Options

--debug
Enables the printing of detailed debugging lines. Can be used in conjunction with --test to test new messaging rules.
--color|--status color
Specified the status color of the event being reported. color can be green, yellow or red.
--host hostname
The hostname of the server that is being reported on.
--service service
The name of the service that is being reported on.
--time time
The time of the event being reported in epoch format (i.e. time()).
--summary "summary text"
This is the summary message field of the event being reported on.
--file filename
The name of a file to read the detailed message text from. If the filename is '-', the text is read from stdin.
--message "message text"
Detailed message text of the event being reported.

The following parameters can be specified on the command line with the accompanying command line parameters.

color
the status color of the message (red, yellow, or green)
host
the hostname being of the alert
service
the name of the service of the alert
time
the date/time (in time() format) of the problem
message
a summary line of the problem

Theory of Operation

When spong-message is called, the information passed in the arguments is run through a list of rules which determine who is contacted, when they are contacted and how often. The information is also run through a number of checks to determine if the message should be sent.

A small database in the $SPONGTMP directory is kept so that spong-message can keep track how many pages have been sent, when was the last page sent, etc. These checks help to direct problems to the correct people, and also help to throttle messages when there are wide-spread problems (such as a networking outage).

If you are going to be performing maintenance on a machine, or have standard down time for a machine, you can specify that down time in the spong.hosts file using the down attribute in a %HOSTS variable. If a problem is reported during the time indicated, spong-message will not send any messages.

spong-message also checks for any the acknowledgements|spong-ack entry elsewhere in this document active for a machine. If there an active acknowledgement found for a machine and service, no messages will be sent.

spong-message uses the %HUMANS entries defined in the contacts attributes of the messaging rules of the spong.message manpage to determine who is to be contacted. A list of contacts is generated from all of the message rules that are matched. (See the the spong.message manpage and the spong.hosts manpage documentation for information on the file formats.)

Message Templates

Notification messages are formatted by message templates in the %TEMPLATES configuration variable in the spong.message file. The 'DEFAULT' template is use is no other template is found. Templates override can be defined for any contact, message module, or a combination of the two. See the section on MESSAGE TEMPLATES in the spong.message manpage for information on the file format.

Messaging Modules

spong-message alerts people via the messaging modules that are installed. New messaging functions can be easily created. See the the Message Modules|developer-guide/"MESSAGE MODULES" entry elsewhere in this document section in the Developer Guide.

CONFIGURATION

Configuration Files

spong.hosts
spong.hosts defined attributes for two things of important to <spong-message> 1) the hosts that Spong is monitoring (%HOSTS), and 2) the contacts that are responsible for the various hosts and how to contact them (%HUMANS).

See the spong.hosts manpage for a full description of all of the file formats.

spong.message
This file hold the rules that determine who is to be contacted, when and how often. There are some of the important configuration variables in the spong.message file 1) how the messaging rules are to be scanned ($RULES_MATCH), 2) the messaging rules ($MESSAGING_RULES), 3) how to format the messages being sent (%TEMPLATES).

Configuration Variables

From spong.hosts:

%HUMANS
The %HUMANS configuration variable hold all of possible message recipients (the humans) and the information necessary on how to contact them. Each human contact can be a person, a group of people, or really anything you want.

Each human that is defined should have name attribute associated with it. name is the name or description of the contact.

To send out any notifications at least messaging attribute must be define for the human. A messaging attribute consists of a message module name as a key and contact information as a value. See the section on EXAMPLES elsewhere in this document for a detailed %HUMANS example.

%HOSTS
The %HOSTS configuration variables can hold a list of regularly scheduled maintenance periods (down) for each host. Any alerts that are generated during a maintenance period will be silently discarded.

From spong.message:

$RULES_MATCH
$RULES_MATCH determines how the rules in $MESSAGING_RULES are scanned. If it is FIRST_MATCH the rules will be scanned until the first rule that matches the messaging criteria. A value of ALL means that all of the rules are scan with the contacts of all matching rules being adding into the list of contacts to notify. If the value is OLD, then spong-message will fall back to the messaging code used in Spong versions 2.0 - 2.1 for compatibility.
$MESSAGING_RULES
$MESSAGING_RULES contains the rules that how, who and how often contacts are notified. See $MESSAGING_RULES for the full rules syntax.
%TEMPLATES
%TEMPLATES determined how notification message are formatted. A template format consists a subject and message template strings. Both strings are not required as some message module will not require a subject or a body. See $MESSAGING_RULES for the full rules syntax.

From spong.conf:

$SEND_MESSAGE
$SEND_MESSAGE defines when spong-message is called by spong-server. It is not really specific to spong-message, but I think it is useful to describe its behavior here. This variable can contain one of four valid values. If it is RED, then spong-message is called for every time a system or service reports a problem. If its value is CHANGE, then spong-message is only called when there is a change of state . If this values is RED-CHANGE, then spong-message is called every time a service or service reports a problem and when the condition is cleared. (going from green/yellow to red, and then again going from red to green/yellow). If its value is NONE, then spong-message is never called.
$MESSAGES_PER_HOUR
$MESSAGES_PER_HOUR is the maximum number of messages that are sent to the same person in an hour. All message past this number are just logged to the history file, but are not sent. This helps to prevent against message overload such as when you have a networking problem, and everything appears to go red at once. The default value is 5.
$IDENT_MESSAGES_PER_HOUR
$IDENT_MESSAGES_PER_HOUR is the maximum number of identical messages that are sent to the same person in an hour. The default value is 3.

FILES

spong.conf, spong.hosts, $SPONGTMP/message-db, spong.message

EXAMPLES

Here are some examples to show you possible configurations.

spong.hosts
   %HUMANS = (
      'unix-staff' => { 'name'   => 'Midrange On-call Staff',
                        'email'  => 'its-unix@school.edu'
                       },

      'georgew'    => { 'name'   => 'George Wilson',
                        'email'  => 'georgew@school.edu',
                        'skytel' => '1234567' }, 
   );

   %HOSTS = (

     'grad.cs.school.edu' =>      { services => 'ftp smtp http',
                                   'down'   => ["*:05:30-06:30",
                                                 "0:00:00-04:00" ] },

     'www.school.edu' =>         { services => 'ftp smtp http' },

   );

spong.message
    $RULES_MATCH = 'FIRST-MATCH';

    $MESSAGING_RULES = [

       { hosts => [ 'gard.cs.school.edu' ],
         contacts => [ 'unix-staff'],
         exclude_colors => ['green','yellow'],
       },

       { hosts => ['www.school.edu'],
         contacts => [ 'georgew:email',
                       { rcpt=>'georgew:skytel', repeat=>900, }, ]
       },

    ];

    %TEMPLATES = (

      'DEFAULT' => { subject => 'spong - !!COLOR!! !!HOST!! !!SERVICE!!',
                     body    =>
    '!!DATETIME!!
    !!COLOR!! !!HOST!! !!SERVICE!!
    !!SUMMARY!!',
                   },

    'email'  => { subject => 'spong - !!COLOR!! !!HOST!! !!SERVICE!!',
                  body    =>
    'Host !!HOST!! service has been reported !!COLOR!!.
    Summary: !!SUMMARY!!

    Spong Web Page:      !!WWWSPONG!!
    Service Detail Page: !!WWWSPONG!!/service/!!HOST!!/!!SERVICE!!

    Status event details:
    !!DETAILED!!
    ',
              },
    );

DEPENDENCIE/h1

Perl v5.003 or greater is required.

To receive pages, you currently must have a pager that can be contacted electronically (via email or web interface).

BUGS

No know bugs.

SEE ALSO

the spong-server entry elsewhere in this document, the spong.hosts manpage, the spong.conf manpage, the spong.message manpage, the spong-message-mod-template entry elsewhere in this document, the strftime(3) entry elsewhere in this document

AUTHOR

Ed Hill <ed-hill@uiowa.edu>, Unix System Administrator, The University of Iowa

Stephen L Johnson <sjohnson@monsters.org>

HISTORY

Based on code/ideas from Sean MacGuire (BB), and Helen Harrison (Pong). Ed Hill original converted Big Brother (http://www.bb4.com) into Perl which diverged from Big Brother to become Spong. Ed Hill continued Spong development until version 2.1. Stephen L Johnson took over development in October, 1999 with his changes which became Spong 2.5.


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