Can the documentation be changed for DOWNTIME?

[SebA]

Patrick Nixon <mailto:pnixon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just for the record regarding Multiple Downtimes
> 
> The final syntax which henrik provided worked.
> 
> I'm a little baffled as to why the quoted multiword Cause didn't
> work, but it's working now 
> 
> --Pat
> 
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 1:47 AM, Henrik Stoerner
> <henrik at hswn.dk> wrote:
>> In
> <c6fda93d0810081647i690dab2bgc960bb3d8ff3c270 at mail.gmail.com>
> "Patrick Nixon" <pnixon at gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Does anyone have some insight into this?
>> 
>>> From the documentation it appears that the syntax I have should work
>>> correctly, but it's not.
>> 
>>> DOWNTIME=cam:60:0000:2400,cam:W:1930:0830
>> 
>>> hobbitd  is giving the error message: Latest errormessages:
>>> Bad timespec (missing colon or no starttime): W
>> 
>> Try adding a "cause" text to the entries. Like
>> 
>>  DOWNTIME=cam:60:0000:2400:Backups,cam:W:1930:0830:Offline
>> 
>> 
>> Henrik

Perhaps the documentation can be changed for DOWNTIME?  This is the 3rd time
this year this question has come up on this mailing list, and I bet there
are many more times where people have either figured it out themselves or
found the solution from the mailing list archives (like me just now). The
documentation is misleading as it suggests that a cause is not optional in
the initial syntax and then it states that it is optional further down the
page (from
http://hobbitmon.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/hobbitmon/trunk/common/bb-hosts.
5?view=markup):

  289 .IP
DOWNTIME=[columns:]day:starttime:endtime:cause[,day:starttime:endtime:cause]
  290 This tag can be used to ignore failed checks during
  291 specific times of the day - e.g. if you run services that
  292 are only monitored e.g. Mon-Fri 8am-5pm, or you always
  293 reboot a server every Monday between 5 and 6 pm.
  294 
...
  321 The "columns" setting is optional - it may be a comma-separated
  322 list of status columns in which case the DOWNTIME setting only applies
  323 to these columns.
  324 
  325 The "cause" string (optional) is a text that will be displayed on
  326 the status web page to explain thy the system is down.

If it is necessary to specify "columns" when specifying "cause" (and
apparently it is) it should say so. It should also say that you can use "*"
for "columns" if you want all of them. And it should say that you should use
double quotes around a cause that contains spaces.

Many thanks,

SebA