Time Periods

[cm2000]

Hello all,

Firstly, may I say that I'm finding that zabbix is an awesome product - its our only open source package that we have on Linux, which is monitoring our whole Microsoft based network.

I have some actions set up on various triggers that send me alerting text messages, but i generally don't want to be notified during 23:00 - 05:00 as I'm usually asleep.

But, if my trigger got raised (e.g. Disk space below 10%) during the period 23:01 - 04:59 and the trigger is still set to PROBLEM, i would like to be notified at 05:01, or after the time period exclusion has elapsed.
If the Trigger Status got changed back to OK before 05:00, I dont want the text message action to take place.

Does this make sense? Is this possible? can somebody point me in the right direction?

Many Thanks,

Tom
IT Systems Manager
CM2000 Ltd

[cm2000]

Time

Bump...

Any thoughts anyone? It really would help me out!

Thanks in advance,

Tom

[Kai-Kai]

To choose the period you don't want to receive notification, you can go to the "administration" tab, then "users" and then edit the user corresponding to you. You can specify time period for each media.
Changing the period allow you yo avoid being notified during the period 23:01 - 04:59.
But, I don't think you'll receive an email after 5:00 if the problem occures during the "silent period"...
Did you already try this to be sure ?

You can also specify a time period in the configuration of the action... same idea, it would avoid being notified during the period you want, but it doesn't solve the problem of the notification after 5:00...

I have had another idea... but I don't know if it works, but perhaps can you try to use .time() option, as explained on pages 128 and 130 of the pdf documentation ?
The example given is :

Example 9 CPU activity at night time
Use of function time():
({zabbix: system.cpu.load[all,avg1].min(300)}>2)&({zabbix:
system.cpu.load[all,avg1].time(0)}>000000)& ({zabbix:
system.cpu.load[all,avg1].time(0)}<060000)
The trigger may change its status to true, only at night (00:00-06:00) time.

Your trigger only goes on "true" during the period you want, so you're only alerted during this period...

Does it help you ?
I think it's not exactly what you're looking for, but I don't have any solution aswering exactly to your question...

[cm2000]

Success

Hi,

It's working!

For reference:

a) Setting a Time Period per user does not acheive the desired results.

b) Using the time function within the trigger is the way forward. In testing, I received my alert email as soon as the specifed time period was up.

Thanks for your help!

Tom

[Kai-Kai]

You're welcome.

The only disadvantage I see using this method is if the problem occures in the period you don't want to receive mail, there's no notification (on the dashboard for example), so it's not counted in repports or stats.

I think it could have been useful to have both : the possibility to avoid sending notification during the period but to display the probleme on the dashboard.

But in fact it's possible if really needed, with 2 triggers for the same item : one with email sending and time period, and one without it... And a dependency can be defined to avoid having the 2 at the same time.

[cm2000]

Yes, i thought of that disadvantage as well, although i'm not too fussed by it as we are using Zabbix primarily for alerting and monitoring. Reporting and statistics are not really that important at this stage.

Although the trigger isnt raise, we could if need be see the event via the graphs for that specific item - this would cover us if we had to know an exact time.

Is there somewhere I can add this to the zabbix wish list for a later release? As you say, i'm sure others would fine this a useful feature.

Thanks,

Tom

[Kai-Kai]

Is there somewhere I can add this to the zabbix wish list for a later release? As you say, i'm sure others would fine this a useful feature.

I think you can use the forum "suggestions and feedbacks".

http://www.zabbix.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=4

[cm2000]

I've modified some of my triggers using this time function, but on the ones that check unreachable, i get the following error in my zabbix-server.log file.

10664:20090710:135725 Expression [({14404}=2)& ({14403}>030000)& ({14403}<230000)] for item [24634][cm037:status] cannot be evaluated: unable to get function value: lastvalue IS NULL for function [14404][cm037:status.last(0)]

Any clues?

[Kai-Kai]

Mmmm... do you use a function which doesn't send any value ?
The message seems to complain about it... but I haven't seen it before... so I'm not sure about about a possible solution.

[cm2000]

OK, thanks i'll have a further look into it.

This error is directly feed from the standard in built function of determining the system being unreachable. I've just added the time function around it.