[Xymon] Status, NCV and time stamps

[J.C. Cleaver]

On Mon, October 5, 2015 3:52 pm, Boldt, David wrote:
> I'm in the process of converting Big Brother tests to XYMon and would like
> to enable RRD/graphics for these tests.
>
> Several of these tests present date/time information which is important.
>
> As a workaround for one test I have replaced the colon on a HH:MM:DD
> formatted date with a dot, but it doesn't really look like a time anymore.
>
> * Is there a way to have NCV ignore colons (and only use "=")?
>
> * Is there a way to have NCV ignore a line (which might contain colons)?


Unfortunately, there isn't a way to do either of these at the moment. I'd
considered a data parser that looks for a hidden HTML comment marker for
lines to process (and ignores the rest), but it's not quite present yet.


>
> * Can I use Data messages in such a way that the corresponding Status
> message is not parsed?

The easiest way to do this would be to add a --filter= option to the
xymond_channel command line for the xymond_rrd process that's handling the
*status* channel, but not the data channel.

There's a CPU load hit for doing so (since now you're doing a PCRE on each
message), however it may not have much of an impact depending on your
message volume.


> * Might there be some other mechanism entirely?

Generally, speaking for more advanced RRD submission, the 'trends' message
can be a useful data payload which is read directly by xymond_rrd. The
advantage there (aside from more direct control) is the ability to send
data points for multiple graphs at once, which could outweigh the expense
of another message transmission.


HTH,

-jc