[Nagiosplug-devel] New Threshold Formats

[Richard Edward Horner]

Yeah, makes sense all around. I think some points just need
clarification and/or to be stated explicitly like you said.

Thanks, Rich(ard)

On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 6:57 PM, Thomas Guyot-Sionnest <dermoth at aei.ca> wrote:
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> On 02/10/08 12:11 PM, Richard Edward Horner wrote:
>> After my asking about the proposed new threshold formats, Thomas was
>> kind enough to link me the latest available version of the RFC which
>> is here:
>>
>> http://nagiosplugins.org/rfc/new_threshold_syntax
>>
>> Here are some quick thoughts. Some of these are just semantics but
>> there are a couple things that appear to me to be errors but maybe I'm
>> just not reading them correctly or maybe I need more sleep.
>>
>> First range format is defined as:
>>
>> "
>> Simple ranges are of the format:
>>
>> start..end
>>
>> Where:
>>
>>     * start and end must be defined
>>     * start and end match the regular expression
>> /^[+-]?[0-9]+\.?[0-9]*$|^inf$/ (ie, a numeric or "inf")
>> ...
>>     * alert is raised if value is inside start and end range
>> "
>>
>> And then examples are given like:
>>
>> check_procs -C httpd --vsize ok=0..8096,warn=8097..16182
>>
>> So, the regular expression appears to not match the examples and it
>> also appears that it would match some things that do not fit the
>> requirements. All the examples have two dots separating the boundary
>> points and require both a start and end. The regular expression
>> appears to make the end optional through making the dot (singular, not
>> dual in the given examples) optional and then the second [0-9] is
>> starred making it optional by allowing for zero characters there.
>
> In the current syntax, thresholds default to exclusive and omitting the
> end makes range start from 0 up to the defined end.
>
> Since the new thresholds specify inclusive ranges, I believe the default
> if we allow omitting the end is that the end becomes infinite. The most
> common type of threshold is response time, so specifying i.e. "10" for
> response time would be equivalent of saying "warn between 10 and inf.".
> Does that makes sense?
>
> I'll double-check other posts and clarify the RFC.
>
>> Additionally, this regex does not allow for ranges that end with a
>> negative value. It is conceivable that you might need to check
>> something like:
>>
>> -9..-4
>>
>> Or perhaps more likely:
>>
>> -inf..-100
>
> This has likely been overlooked. The rexexp is just a standard way of
> specifying what's allowed. I'll fix it.
>
>> The other thing is semantic. It says "alert is raised if value is
>> inside start and end range" but these range specifications are general
>> including for OK so in the case of that match, an alert would not be
>> raised. I think it should say, "range is matched/satisfied if the
>> value is inside the start and end".
>
> I'm not 100% sure what was the consensus on this (I'll verify in old
> emails)... The idea of ok thresholds if fair - provide a way to only
> specify which values are good. IIRC it should resume to this:
>
> 1. Without OK range:
>  a. check for critical range if specified
>  b. check for warning range if specified
>  c. return OK
>
> 2: With OK range:
>  a. check for OK range
>  b. check for critical range if specified
>  c. check for warning range if specified
>  d. return CRITICAL.
>
> As soon as I have time to verify old emails regarding this I'll clarify
> the RFC.
>
> Thomas
>
> - --
> Thomas
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-- 
Richard Edward Horner
Engineer / Composer / Electric Guitar Virtuoso
http://richhorner.com