[Xymon] File monitoring with `date` in filename

Hi,

thanks a lot to all and especially to you, Jeremy. The central info was "You cannot use backticks in analysis.cfg FILE patterns". I still have no idea what the bourne shell is doing on the client. Xymon user uses bash, maybe the error is the result of some other script using sh and not related to the file problem. But at least it is working know and I know how to set entries in analysis.cfg and client-local.cfg

Rolf

This is what I use now analysis.cfg: FILE /home/mypath/log/update_out_$(date +%Y%m%d).txt MTIME<600 red client config.cfg: file:bash -c 'find /mypath/log/update_out_$(date +%Y%m%d).txt'

On 26 September 2013 17:34, Rolf Schrittenlocher <schritte at ub.uni-frankfurt.de <mailto:schritte at ub.uni-frankfurt.de>> wrote:

On the server we have in
analysis.cfg
HOST=myserver
 FILE    `/home/mypath/log/update_out_$(date +%Y%m%d).txt`
MTIME<600 red

You cannot use backticks in analysis.cfg FILE patterns. You have to use a pattern match or a regular expression. So one of these might work for you:

Live in San Francisco

or

FILE "%/home/mypath/log/update_out_[0-9]*\.txt" MTIME<600 red

These should match whatever file is evaluated by the backtick expression in analysis.cfg. That will only ever be one file, so you should only see alarms for the correct file.

in client-local.cfg:
[myserver]
  file:`find /mypath/log/update_out_$(date +%Y%m%d).txt`

If your Xymon user's shell is bourne shell, then the $() form won't work. Bourne shell uses only backticks, but you cannot use backticks either, because Xymon terminates the "file:" expression at the second backtick.

You can probably just run bash, if it's installed, and give it the command you want, using the $() expression, like so:

file:bash -c 'find /mypath/log/update_out_$(date +%Y%m%d).txt'

In xymonclient.log I see an entry
sh: syntax error at line 1: `(' unexpected
but I don't know if it is related to the file problem or to
anything else.

Yes, this is bourne shell complaining about "(" following "$" because it requires an opening paren to be at the start of an expression. It doesn't understand "$(). So try the "bash" thing and see if it works for you. If bash isn't installed, then the same should work for korn shell (ksh).

J

-- Mit freundlichen Gruessen Rolf Schrittenlocher

Lokales Bibliothekssystem Frankfurt Senckenberganlage 31, 60054 Frankfurt Tel: (49) 69 - 798 28908 Fax: (49) 69 798 28817 LBS: lbs-f at mlist.uni-frankfurt.de Persoenlich: schritte at ub.uni-frankfurt.de