[Xymon] question on DURATION and DOWNSECS in alerts

[J.C. Cleaver]

On Mon, April 7, 2014 5:55 am, Kevin VerMeer wrote:
> I have a question on what I am seeing in some of the alerts being
> generated.
> I have a xymon alert script set up for connection events.
> The alert.cfg entry is:
> HOST=* SERVICE=conn COLOR=red
>         SCRIPT /usr/local/xymonutil/alertscripts/noconnectivity.sh
> DURATION>15 REPEAT=15 RECOVERED
>
> To me that says the script should only be invoked if connectivity is down
> for 15 minutes, repeat every 15 if still down, and one final time when
> connectivity is back up.
>
> Within the script that gets invoked, a message gets creates like this:
> MSG="Xymon is reporting no connectivty to $STATION.\n  Current time:
> $DATE.\n  Number of seconds down: $DOWNSECS. \n  Time down: $TIMEDOWN. \n"
>
> And one MSG that is generated is
> Xymon is reporting no connectivty to sta10143.
>  Current time: 04/06/14 18:00:55.
>  Number of seconds down: 60.
>  Time down: 00:01:00.
>
> I would have expected the $DOWNSECS variable to be the total time down,
> even including the original 15 minute DURATION.
> Is that thinking correct?  Or does DOWNSECS only include the time down
> after the DURATION kicks in?
> Or am I off base on something else?
>

Kevin,

We're doing something similar and - AFAIK - $DOWNSECS is indeed the total
duration of the incident (although this may be subject to any flap
detection that's enabled).

Q's:
What version are you running?
and Does it actually wait 15m before sending the first message?


Regards,
-jc