[Nagiosplug-devel] Improved check_oracle (TS check with autoextend)

[Stanley Hopcroft]

Dear Folks,

I am writing to thank you for your letter and say,

On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 11:05:44AM +0100, Andreas Ericsson wrote:

> > 
> > The second change is a minor change. I set the status code to UNKNOWN if the tablespace could not be examined.
> > I personally don't want to get CRITICAL notifications when I check a
> > tablespace and get an Oracle error, because of a broken network
> >connection or a database that is in shutdown/startup state etc.
> > 
> Bad Thing.
> There's been a discussion on this on the nagios-users list. UNKNOWN 
> should only be reported when there is a user error (too few arguments, 
> etc. etc.). If it fails to fetch information from the network, that is 
> considered to be a critical error.

Eeek !

The I think new committed infrastructure for embedded Perl Nagios (ePN)
support does precisely this ie if the plugin bombs out because of

 . compile time errors (probably because of the ePN environment)

 . run time errors

then UNKNOWN is returned (along with a dump depending on log level of
the ePN).

I share the former writers concern about spurious alerts.

I canvassed this proposal (for new behaviour for ePN) with an RFC to
both Nag-users and Nag-devel and possibly plugindevel as well, and got
_no_ comments.

Personally, I have been running this way for some months now and much
prefer it to the former nightmare of committing a new plugin only to
find it notifies people unnecessarily (yes, I test; use the epn
simulator etc but still things go wrong).

Yours sincerely.


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Hopcroft
------------------------------------------------------------------------

'...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes
me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee...'

from Meditation 17, J Donne.