How to send alerts on new status, ignoring repeat ?

[Charles Goyard]

Hi,

at my company we manage alert filtering with an homebrew tool. One of
its features is that it sends alerts on the second identical message
received (anti up/down/up feature). It is somewhat equivalent to the
DURATION keyword, with the difference it's not time-based, but
count-based.

The "repeat" feature of hobbitd_alert defeats this mecanism, because it
resends an alert every 5 minutes. The problem arises when a specific
status reports every 5 minute and a few seconds :

02:00:00 the db1 host sends "db1.sql red"
02:00:01 hobbitd_alerts sends "db1.sql red" to my external filter
02:00:02 my external filter queues the alert until a second one comes
02:05:00 hobbitd_alerts sends "db1.sql red" to my external filter
02:05:01 my external filter pages "db1.sql red" to the crew
02:05:04 the db1 host sends "db1.sql green"
02:05:05 hobbitd_alerts sends "db1.sql green" to my external filter
02:05:06 my external filter pages "db1.sql recovered" to the now awakened crew


My question is : is there a way to tell hobbit not to repeat alerts, but
to send alerts only upon reception of a status from a client ?

If not, I believe the "security code" is the same whenever an alert gets
repeated, so I'll have to modify my filter to check for that. (or maybe
write a real stripped down equivalent of hobbitd_alert that only relays
incoming statuses to my filter).



-- 
Charles Goyard - charles.goyard at orange-ftgroup.com - (+33) 1 45 38 01 31
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