Alerts management

Description

This option will allow you to change alert management settings as shown below:

Settings

Mail mode (TEXT/HTML)

Alerts are by default sent in HTML format. With some mail clients, HTML mails are not correctly displayed or even rejected. This option is used to switch between HTML format and pure TEXT format.

HTML mail example:

TEXT mail example:

Mail recipients list

All alerts coming from monitoring scripts and checks scripts are sent using a common alert script which by default sends a "wall" message to all connected users and an email (via "sendmail") to the recipients list that can be defined using this option.

The common alert script can be customized too if you prefer not to receive emails and use commands from your monitoring software for example.

Do not add blank lines and set one recipient per line

Create/update alert mail footer

Used to add comments at the end of the mail.

HTML tags like new line, font and bold can be added within the file. In case the format is switched to TEXT, these tags will be automatically removed from the text mail.

Example:

Enable/disable wall alert messages

Alerts are by default sent via email (sendmail) and via via "wall" messages to all the connected users .

This option enables or disables these "wall" messages.

Update/reinstall common alert script

All alerts coming from monitoring scripts and checks scripts are sent using a common alert script.

If this script does not exist, it is initialized by copying an example provided in the kit.

If it exists and is different from the original one, you are invited to reinitialize it from the default one:

Answer "yes" if you did not change the original script file and you have updated the Linux Toolkit (read the corresponding release notes)
Do not answer "yes" if you customized your own alert script.
In case you've overwritten the existing alert script, the previous version can be restored from the "/charon/archive" folder

Example:

This script can be customized to send alerts the way you want, adding for example commands to link with your monitoring tool. It is based on an alert code passed as parameter 1.

All other parameters are information related to the alert. The script uses templates in order to send emails and wall messages (see "/opt/charon/utils/templates/*.mail" and "/opt/charon/utils/templates/*.wall" files if needed).

The table below lists all available values for parameter 1 in case you plan to customize the scripts and send alerts by your own (monitoring software lines of commands, snmptrap, etc...)

Parameter 1 can be the following:

Parameter 1	Severity	Description
ABORTED	CRITICAL	Guest has stopped without user or service request
AKSUSBFAIL	CRITICAL	If the dongle is detected as removed whereas it is disconnected, the askusb daemons are restarted. If the restart fails after 15 tries, this message is sent
BOOTDUPL	WARNING	Tried to start a guest that is already running or a guest is found more than once in the guests list
BOOTNOTFND	CRITICAL	The file containing the guests to start is empty or not found
EMULSTART	INFORMATIONAL	Emulator has been started
EXPCHK	CRITICAL, MAJOR, MINOR, INFORMATION	The license is about to expire
FOUND	INFORMATIONAL	License dongle found at startup
HASPWARN	CRITICAL	Warning messages found in the license, guests cannot start
IFCFGADDR	CRITICAL	The network interface defined in the configuration has already an assigned IP address, cannot be used for guest
IFCFGCRIT	CRITICAL	One parameter in the ifcfg-ethN file is not configured correctly (mandatory value)
IFCFGUNKN	CRITICAL	The interface name defined in the configuration file is not valid (not found with 'ifconfig <eth>' command)
IFCFGWARN	WARNING	One parameter in the ifcfg-ethN file is not configured correctly (recommended value)
INVALID	CRITICAL	Invalid configuration on dongle to start the guest
NOTFOUND	CRITICAL	The guests have not been able to start at boot due to dongle disconnected
REMOVED	CRITICAL	Dongle has been removed: the guest sees the dongle as disconnected and will stop after the defined interval if the dongle is not replaced
REMOVRESET	ERROR	Dongle seen as removed whereas not disconnected (aksusb driver failure). In this case the USB is reset and drivers are restarted ( Not valid if the dongle is a network dongle and then located on another server)
STOPPED	CRITICAL	Guest has been stopped, reasons explained in parameters 4, 5 and 6
STOPPEDREQ	INFORMATIONAL	Guest has been stopped, requested by user or shutdown
TESTMAIL	INFORMATIONAL	Used to test email mode when setting HTML or pure TEXT
TOEXIT	CRITICAL	The guest is about to exit, reasons explained in parameters 4 and 5
USBDISCONNECT	MAJOR	Dongle has been removed (immediate detection)

Select guests log alert level

Select the alert level to send alerts when events are found in the guest log file:

Level	Information	Warning	Error
0
1
2
3

Requires the "charon_logevent" entry activated in the "crontab" file => menu option "Manage recursive jobs: license expiration check, log events (cron)"

This does not affect guest startup alerts. You will receive alerts when a guest starts or stop whatever the level is.

View alerts history

This option will allow you to view the alerts history sent via the alert script. Alerts can be viewed in a continuous way or using a text editor.

Example - Continuous view:

We can see above:

A message telling the emulator is started
A message telling the license (main one) is found and that also displays its expiration date
The main license dongle has been unplugged and the aksusbd monitor reported the alert (immediate). We can see one license (backup one) is still connected
The license dongle was plugged in again.
We do not see here any dongle removal alert reported by the emulator itself, this is because by default the emulator checks for dongle presence every 1 hour (deferred)

Press CTRL-C to get back to the previous menu

License expiration alerts from guests

This option will toggle on/off the WARNING alerts sent from the guest log file. By default these alerts are sent once per hour 120 hours before expiration whatever the license interval check is set to.

If you have setup the log level alert option to receive WARNING messages then you will receive one alert per hour. This option can be disabled if the expiration check entry is set in the crontab (by default).

Backup licenses (time limited): please take care of the time remaining that will be reported in the license detection alert, if the number of remaining hours is less than 24, you could not receive any alert from the license expiration check that runs everyday at 09:00 AM by default. It is possible to make it run more than once a day in this case.