spong-ack(1) · carta

Usage

spong-ack [--debug] [--batch] host services time [message]

spong-ack [--debug] --delete ack-id

Overview

When a spong event occurs (or will occur), you can use this tool to acknowledge that you know that there is a problem. You can provide text that will be seen by others looking at the event (via a spong display program). You can specify at time limit that the problem will occur. If a problem has been acknowledged, you will no longer received notifications of the problem, and the display programs will show the status of the service as "blue".

Options

--debug: Print debugging statements. This option can be specified while creating or deleting acks.

--batch: Print the ack-id instead of the normal output. The primary use of this parameter is for scripts. An ack can be created when a job that runs causes a service to temporarily exceed it's normally limits, or if a service is taken down for an unknown or irregular length of time.

--delete: Delete a previously created ack.

Here is a description of the arguments for creating acks:

host: The host having the problem(s) you are acknowledging.

service: The service or services (separated by ".") or all services that your are acknowledging.

time: The that the acknowledgement will late. This can be an offset "+1h, +3a,d +1w" or an absolute date and/or time indicator "12/25/1997 14:00:00. The date needs to be a 4 digit year, and the time needs to be in 24 hour format.

message: An optional message that will appear to those viewing the state of the host with a spong display program. If the value is "-", then the message will read from STDIN.

Here is a description of the arguments for deleting acks:

ack-id: The acknowledgment id to delete. The id can be obtained by using the --batch parameter when creating the acknowledgment, or by using the spong command with the --brief and --ack parameters.

Configuration

Configuration Files

spong-cleanup reads the standard spong.conf and spong.conf.<host> configuration files.

Configuration Variables

$SPONGSERVER: The host that at least the spong-server and spong-message programs are running on. Typically the spong-network program runs on that host as well.

$SPONG_UPDATE_PORT: This variable defines the port that the spong-server update process listens on. If this variable is not defined on the $SPONGSERVER host, the spong-server update process will not be started. The default value is 1998.

Files

SPONGHOME/etc/spong.conf, SPONGHOME/etc/spong.conf.<host>

Examples

   spong-ack mailhub.my-inc.com all '05/27/2000 06:00:00' 'Server is being upgraded'
   spong-ack www5.my-inc.com http +1h 'Web server is randomly dying. Investigating.'

In a shell script:

  ...
  HOST=`hostname`
  ACKID=`spong-ack --batch $HOST cpu +8h 'Database exports are running'`
  ...
  # Database exports are done here
  ...
  spong-ack --delete $ACKID
  ...

Dependencies

Perl v5.005_03 or greater is required.

History

Debian 5.0 (Lenny): the text shown here
Debian 4.0 (Etch)
Debian 3.1 (Sarge)
Debian 3.0 (Woody)

--batch since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); --debug since Debian 5.0 (Lenny); --delete since Debian 5.0 (Lenny).