When conditions merit, Big Brother will send an e-mail or pager notification to the administrator. The numeric message includes a three-digit error code followed by the 12-digit IP address of the machine with the problem. The possible codes are:
|
Code |
Meaning |
|
100 |
Disk Error. Disk is over 95% full... |
|
200 |
CPU Error. CPU load average is unacceptably high. |
|
300 |
Process Error. An important process has died. |
|
400 |
Message file contains a serious error. |
|
500 |
Network error, can't connect to that IP address. |
|
600 |
Web server HTTP error -- server is down or not responding properly. |
|
7--- |
Generic TCP server error -- 7 + server port number. For example, 721 = FTP down. |
|
800 |
DNS server on that machine is down. |
|
911 |
User Page. Message is phone number to call back. |
|
999 |
The service reported in an error could not be found in the svcerrlist token in the etc/bbwarnsetup.cfg file. |
If you use external script tests, there could be additional error codes.
The administrator can configure exactly who gets notification messages and what conditions trigger them.
Each notification also includes a seven-digit code known as the "ack ID." This ID is required to acknowledge an event so you can delay any further notifications for that event:
In an e-mail notification, the ack ID is at the beginning of both the subject and the body of the message. In the subject the format is!BB - XXXXXXX!; in the body the format is [XXXXXXX].
In a numeric page, the ack ID is the last seven digits of the message, following the numeric code. If your pager cannot receive and display more than 21 digits, you will be missing some digits. If you have the first five digits, you can acknowledge for all recipients (see below) if that is allowed by the procedures at your site.
There are two ways to acknowledge a notification: from the Big Brother Web page display or by sending an e-mail acknowledgement.
|
1. |
Display the main Big Brother page. |
|
2. |
Click the Manage icon |
|
3. |
Enter the seven-digit ack ID in the Enter Security Code field in the acknowledgement section of the management page and specify the delay to apply to the next notification for the event in the Don't page me again... field (see the note below). You can also enter a message. This message and more acknowledgment information is saved in the <BBSERVER>\BBVAR\acks\acklog file. |
|
4. |
Click I'm working on it. |
Note: Be careful with the delay because the pagetype token from etc/bbwarnsetup.cfg also plays a role here. If you set a large delay value when using the RCPT pagetype, you are essentially telling Big Brother not to notify at all for that delay. On the other hand, acknowledging an event when the pagetype is set to EVENT will delay only that particular event and not affect the notification schedule for other events.
You can acknowledge an event for all recipients by entering the first five digits of the ack ID and adding 99 to it. For example: 1234599. The delay will apply to all recipients so be careful with this. The only recipients that are not delayed are "escalated" recipients (see bbwarnrules.cfg for an explanation of escalation in the notification feature)
If the Big Brother server is set up to accept it, when you receive an e-mail notification, you can simply reply to the mail message to acknowledge the notification. The subject of the reply mail message must be in the following format (as it generally is when you use the reply feature):
Re: !BB - XXXXXXX!
If your e-mail program does not prefix replies with Re:, you can change the expected prefix when configuring e-mail acknowledgements.
You can override the default DELAY value by adding the desired delay to the end of the subject. For example:
Re: !BB - XXXXXXX! DELAY=120
This sets the delay to 120 minutes
You can also specify a message by adding MSG= followed by the message text. This must be the last entry on the subject line. The message is saved in bbvar/acks/acklog. For example:
Re: !BB - XXXXXXX! MSG=This is a message
Finally, you can ask for a confirmation that your message was received by adding ACK=Y to the subject line. Note that getting a confirmation does not guarantee that the acknowledgement has been properly processed by Big Brother..
You can use two, or all three, directives in the same acknowledgement. For example:
Re: !BB - XXXXXXX! ACK=Y DELAY=120 MSG=This is a message
Note. If the mail message does not start with Re: !BB - XXXXXXX (or whatever prefix is defined for acknowledgements), the message is saved at the location pointed to by MAILFILE.
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