Re: mdadm mail option configuration

["Jakob Østergaard" <jakob@unthought.net>]

On Thu, May 30, 2002 at 09:10:41AM +1000, Neil Brown wrote:
> On Wednesday May 29, danci@agenda.si wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 May 2002, Neil Brown wrote:
> > 
> > > > Then, I just have an init script that runs:
> > > >
> > > > 	/sbin/mdadm -Fs --delay=600 &
> > >
> > > Why 600 (10 minutes)?? I would suggest 60seconds for normal operation
> > > and 1 second for testing.
> > 
> > I've tried this and maybe I'm missing something. I've set a 5 second
> > interval for checking and I only got one mail - notifiyng me about
> > a failure.
> 
> Yes, that's right.  One failure, one email.  I'm not in the business
> of spam.

What we do with SysOrb (blatant plug: http://sysorb.com) is to send out an
e-mail immediately when the RAID degrades, and then a new mail every N seconds.
The RAID may be checked every 10 seconds, and the user may configure N to be,
say, 1800 seconds.  So the failure is detected almost immediately, while the
alert will only be sent every half hour for example.

We've found that this repetition is useful as a reminder.   It also motivates
people to either fix the problem, or schedule downtime for the check saying
that it will be down for another 24 hours for example.

Once you are administering more than a few machines, one alert can get lost in
the occational heap.

...
> It has occurred to me that it could be useful to send mail at startup
> if there appear to be any abnormalities, but I think I would prefer
> that sort of functionality to be external.  A sysdamin might want that
> mail are reboot, or every night, or every week, or never.  A simple:
>   grep -s > /dev/nu $magic_pattern /proc/mdstat && 
>        mail -s "Raid problem on `hostname`" root << END
> 	    Possible RAID problem, please check.
> 	    `hostname`
> 	    `cat /proc/mdstat
> 	    END
> 
> is all that is needed.

In general, I think that these small scripts are really nice and all, if that
is "good enough" for you.   Once they are no longer good enough, start looking
into real monitoring systems.

NetSaint could be hacked into supporting RAID I'm sure.   And if you want to
save the hackery and can accept a commercial solution, well, then I plugged one
just above  ;)

-- 
................................................................
:   jakob@unthought.net   : And I see the elder races,         :
:.........................: putrid forms of man                :
:   Jakob Østergaard      : See him rise and claim the earth,  :
:        OZ9ABN           : his downfall is at hand.           :
:.........................:............{Konkhra}...............:
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