Alert Components
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Alert Components

An alert consists of three components:

Because all three of these components are configurable, you can send alerts for just about any activity to a variety of places.


Alert Sources

The alert source is the program or process that sends the alert.  NFR includes two types of alert sources: built-in sources and user sources.

Built-in Sources

Built-in sources are NFR programs and processes that send alerts.  They send alerts so that you can monitor the NFR itself.  The built-in sources include the:

  • alert daemon
  • nfrd
  • space manager

User Sources

User sources are other NFR programs or processes that you can configure to send alerts.   Backends are user sources, because you can decide which backends you want to send alerts.  You can also configure new alert sources for segments of N code, so that you know the alert came from that section of code.


Alert Messages

The alert message is the message that the alert daemon sends to the alert facility.   NFR includes two types of alert messages: built-in messages and user messages.

Built-in Messages

Built-in messages are messages that are sent by the built-in sources.   You can configure these to have different severity and text messages.  You cannot delete them.

User Messages

User messages are the alerts that you can configure.  You can configure which programs send the alerts, what the alert says, and where to send the alert.

Alert Message Contents

The message that the alert daemon sends consists of three components:

  • Message Text
  • Message Severity
  • Message Destination

Message Text

This is the actual text of the alert.

Message Severity

This indicates how important the message is.  Some alert facilities display the severity as part of the message.    NFR uses the following severities:

  • Information - A routine system event ocurred.
  • Warning - Something unusual ocurred.
  • Error - Something occured that degrades the ability to collect and record information.

Because you can configure the message severity for each type of alert, you can control what type of activity requires a warning and what is merely informational.

Message Destination

This indicates the facilities to which the alert is sent.


Alert Facilities

Alert facilities are the configurations that tell the alert daemon what to do with the message. For example, one alert facility might write all alerts to a log file, while another facility calls a thrid-party program to send a page to a systems administrator.   You can send alerts to one or multiple facilities.

NFR includes two types of alert facilities: built-in facilities and external facilities.

Built-in Facilities

Built-in facilities are destinations included with the alert daemon.  You cannot delete these built-in facilities.  These facilities allow you to send alerts to the common destinations for system alerts: the console, the system log, and the NFR log system.  The NFR built-in sources use these facilities.  You can configure default NFR backends or your own backends to use these built-in facilities as well.    The bult-in facilities include:

  • NFR_FAC_NFRLOG - Writes the alert to the NFR log file ($NFRHOME/data/alerts/log.txt).   Use this facility if you want to view alerts through the GUI alert viewer.
  • NFR_FAC_CONSOLE - Displays the alert on the console of the machine running NFR.
  • NFR_FAC_ACK - Marks alerts sent to the NFR log as unacknowledged.   This allows the administrator to review the logs and make commens before marking them as acknowledged.  Use this facility if you want to review alerts periodically and have a record or your review.  You must use the NFR_FAC_LOG facility when you use the NFR_FAC_ACK facility.
  • NFR_FAC_TRACE - Writes the alert to the NFR log file, including source file and line number.  Also causes alerts sent to NFR_FAC_LOG to be written with source file and line number.  Only active when the alert daemon is started with the -t option.

External  Facilities

External facilities work in conjunction with non-NFR programs to send alerts.   These facilities, which you create, allow you to work with third-party software to send alerts as faxes, e-mail, or pages.  You can configure built-in and user sources to send alerts to external facilities.

 


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