[Xymon] "acceptonly" behavior

[John Thurston]

The "acceptonly" concept has been discussed briefly here, and was tried 
out in 4.3.22-RC3. It's behavior wasn't as expected and it was removed 
again. If this tag is going to make its way back in, I think we should 
have a little discussion of how we'd like it to behave. Since I 
originally brought the subject up, I figure it's polite if I started 
this conversation.

What would be most useful to me is a per-host tag which was also 
accepted on the .default. host lines. The tag would carry one or more 
test names. Any messages for the host for a test not named on this tag 
would be discarded as if they had never been received. An event would 
not be logged for this message. A case-insensitive string match would 
meet my needs.

The affected host will be able to send any messages they like, but only 
those named in the 'acceptonly' tag will be accepted.

If test results for a newly-excluded host.test combination exist, it 
will eventually result in a purple for that host.test, just as if the 
host had stopped reporting that test.

If test results for a newly-excluded host.test combination do not exist, 
there will never be a record of them in the history and they will not 
appear on any report or create any alarms.

How might this tag interact with some other functions; like proxy, 
msgcache, or pulldata? Do messages from these sources enter the flow 
early enough that tags in hosts.cfg can have the desired effect?

-- 
    Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston    907-465-8591
John.Thurston at alaska.gov
Enterprise Technology Services
Department of Administration
State of Alaska