Somehow unexpected Hobbit behavior

[Oliver Grube <oliver_grube (at) campbellsoup.com>]

Hello,

I just want to share a issue we have seen the other day.

I recently configured logrotate to rotate the hobbit logs
in /var/log/hobbit
(I know, it's XYmon, but we still run 4.2)

These were the lines I used:
---------------------------------------------------------
/var/log/hobbit/* {
    compress
    dateext
    maxage 60
    rotate 1
    missingok
    notifempty
    daily
    olddir /var/log/oldlog/hobbit
    create 640 root root
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        /etc/init.d/hobbit restart
    endscript
}
---------------------------------------------------------

After the logrotate happened - midnight - I received hundreds of hobbit
alerts - Ups - was the whole network down?
I logged in and could reach the hobbit server - network works...
But all (and only those) connection tests failed. Everything was red. A
ping however show results and the traceroute reached the systems as well.

The reason was simple.
The Logrotate has re-created the hobbit log files - with 640 root root  -
as in the config.
Hobbit however was not able to write into these files, as it runs as
hobbit:users...
My fault... Changing permission and of course the failure in logrotate,
restart hobbit and everything becomes green again.

I would have assumed, that hobbit simply decide not to start as it could
not write to the logs...
Or that the conn tests went clean due to this...
This causes some calls this morning for the other guys on the alerting
lists... ;-)


mit freundlichen Grüßen - Best regards
med vänlig hälsning - Met vriendelijke groeten
Sincères salutations

Oliver Grube
Campbell?s Germany GmbH 
Registergericht Luebeck ? Reg. Nr. HRB 4082
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Joseph B. Folds III

Geschaeftssitz:		
Geniner Strasse 88 - 100
23560   Luebeck
Deutschland 

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