[Xymon] Xymon disruption every night!

[Greg Earle]

> On Feb 17, 2016, at 12:50 AM,"J.C. Cleaver" <cleaver at terabithia.org> wrote:
> 
>> - Why I have a "DNS error" here ?  I set up the IP yesterday to this host
>> to solve the issue.  The "conn" error disappeared since yesterday evening
>> but the http error still remains.
> 
> All signs do point to an issue with DNS resolution here.
> 
> Was this a custom compile or are you using a package?  If custom, what
> version of c-ares is on your system?  That's the underlying resolution
> library that xymonnet is using by default to handle DNS lookups.  The fact
> that the 'conn' test remained good after you added the local hosts entry
> matches that, since HTTP tests are performed using their own secondary DNS
> lookup (to deal with vhosts, etc.) unless the IP is specified there as well.

J.C.,

I just stumbled across this thread from 2 months ago.  We're having DNS
glitches at my work and it's causing a flood of <hostname>:http "DNS error"
alerts in Xymon, which is becoming a real problem.

But here's what I don't understand.  All of our HTTP-tested hosts are
in the "hosts.cfg" file with their short names (instead of FQHNs).  So I
couldn't understand why DNS was involved since the IP addresses and names
were right there in "hosts.cfg" for Xymon to use.

Your response - specifically "unless the IP is specified there as well" -
implies that there might be another location where I could load the
names and addresses of our HTTP-tested hosts, to avoid this problem.

(Yes, I know - hosts and IP addresses can change.  But I'm in control of
that so I can deal.)

If this is the case, where is that other location where I can specify the
short names/IP addresses for the HTTP tests?

Thanks,

	- Greg