I originally put this in tech support, but have been advised that this is a better place for it, so here it is!
I've created a custom format email layout like so:
Date & Time: $DATETIME$
Notification Type: $TYPE$
Hostname: $HOSTNAME$ ($HOSTSTATE$)
Service: $SERVICENAME$ ($SERVICESTATE$)
Output:
$OUTPUT$
Which sends me nicely laid out emails whenever something happens. One slight problem is the $OUTPUT$ string. I have a service instance that uses the UNIX Log Scanner to look for the RE of [E|e]xception in the last 50 lines of a log. It alerts if there are one or more occurences.
In the case that two cases of 'exception' are found, $OUTPUT$ will be:
found: 2 is greater than or equal to 1 (Process returned with valid status – found 2)
While it is the exact results of the test I asked it to perform, it's not exactly informative. eg It doesn't mention that it's found something that matches a RE in a log. It's becoming a bit of a problem as the application support guys here are far too used to HP VPO/ITO/NNM/whatever which gives slightly less cryptic messages.
Is there any way of getting some slightly more useful information from the output of a service monitor, or should I start re-educating the app support guys? I'm a bit fed up with the running joke that Uptime is stating the obvious, that 2, is indeed, greater than 1…
As a slight work around (no idea if it is currently possible or not), is it possible to reference the Description field of a service instance and have that output in a variable? That would make life a bit easier.
Cheers,
Jay