[Xymon] NCV Bug-Fix / Feature Request

[Vernon Everett]

Hi all

Not sure if this is a bug or a feature request. Split_NCV is doing exactly
what it says on the tin, so it's not really a bug.
But, it makes things not work right, so it looks like a bug.
Maybe I should call it an annoyance?

Once again, I bashed heads with the amazingly useful Split_NCV  feature of
taking your data points and converting them to rrds graphs.
Don't get me wrong, this is probably one of the coolest things in Xymon,
because you can have an undefined number of data sets, and add more
dynamically.
However, it looks at your status output, and anything of that looks like a
*description:value*
it sticks into an associated rrd file.
Including
*Sun Jul 19 08:46:06 WST 2015*
Which happens to be the first line of my test status, and is generally used
as the first line of any test.

So I switched to using status messages for display and data messages for
graphing, which makes logical sense.
And it still grabs the date and makes an rrd file of it. Which is wrong,
and annoying.

My request is that this be fixed. And I can think of a bunch of really
simple ways to fix it, and bunch of more interesting ways.
Some of the simpler ones I can think of are
1. Include metadata tag in your status. A simple #NoNCV which gets removed
server-side for display, and the status doesn't get parsed by the NCV
module. This means only the data messages will get parsed by the NCV
module. (This will preserve backward compatibility)
2. Include metadata tags to indicate where the NCV data starts and stops in
a status message. A #StartNC and #StopNCV or #NCV #/NCV.
Of course there's nothing stopping us from using HTML like tags either.
<NoNCV> or <NCV> and </NCV>
 pick a format. (Depending on how it's implemented, this might break
backward compatibility)
3. Change/Add a server config tag. Instead of simply Split_NCV, we have
Split_NCV that works like it does now. And a Split_NCVD tag, that will only
parse the data messages. (This will preserve backward compatibility)

There are many ways to achieve the result I am looking for, but please, we
need to fix this. It's been an annoyance for way too long.

Regards
Vernon




-- 
"Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory"
- General George Patton
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