[xymon] xymon_4.3.0-RC1: possible lost alerts

[Henrik Størner]

In <4D556C14.5060207 at unil.ch> Dominique Frise <dominique.frise at unil.ch> writes:

>I think I found a bug in xymond_alert.c.

>Lets say there is a page msg for hostA.serviceA and this alert will not 
>be processed immediately because of this part of code:

>    816                  /*
>    817                   * When a burst of alerts happen, we get lots of alert messages
>    818                   * coming in quickly. So lets handle them in bunches and only
>    819                   * do the full alert handling once every 10 secs - that lets us
>    820                   * combine a bunch of alerts into one transmission process.
>    821                   */
>    822                  if (nowtimer < (lastxmit+10)) continue;
>    823                  lastxmit = nowtimer;


>The main loop will then wait for a new msg from xymond (Want msg <num>, 
>startpos... etc).

>Now if the next msg is a page recovery from the same hostA.serviceA,
>the next processing of the active alerts (for loop) will then cleanup 
>the alert for hostA.serviceA without sending any alert.

I haven't tested your diagnosis, but it is probably correct
(from how I remember that this code works).

But is it a problem ?

If you get an alert that clears a few seconds later (that is why there
is a recovery message), then what is the point of sending an alert ?
The notification would be for data that is no longer valid, and 
personally I would rather NOT be alerted a 3 AM if the problem no 
longer exists.

So I am tempted to invoke the old "this is not a bug, it's a feature!"
meme :-)


Regards,
Henrik