In Hobbit 4.2, you can associate each rule in the hobbit-clients.cfg file with a "group". E.g.
HOST=db1.foo.com DISK %^/oracle 95 98 GROUP=dba DISK / 90 95 GROUP=admins PROC sshd GROUP=admins PROC httpd GROUP=webmasters
When the client message is analyzed and the status messages are generated, the group-names of any rules that result in a yellow or red status are combined into a group list, and the status message it then "tagged" with this group-list.
So using the example above, if the /oracle/db1 filesystem is at 96%, then the "disk" status is tagged with a "dba" group. If the root filesystem is at 99%, then the "disk" status is tagged with an "admins" group. If both happen, the "disk" status is tagged with a group-list "admins,dba".
Likewise, if the "sshd" process is missing, the "procs" status is tagged with the "admins" group; if there is not "httpd" process, then it is tagged with the "webmasters" group.
These groups can then be referenced in the hobbit-alerts.cfg file. E.g. if "john" takes care of the DB problems, "sue" is the webmaster, and "bob" handles the normal admin problems, then hobbit-alerts.cfg might have this:
HOST=db1.foo.com MAIL john at foo.com GROUP=dba MAIL bob at foo.com GROUP=admins MAIL sue at foo.com GROUP=webmasters
Or perhaps you'll just base the alerts on the groups, and have
GROUP=dba MAIL john at foo.com GROUP=admins MAIL bob at foo.com GROUP=webmasters MAIL sue at foo.com
Note that this "group-thing" will NOT work with the old BB clients; you must use a real Hobbit client. But I gotta get you guys upgrading, so this is my cunning scheme to make all of you to stop using the BB client :-)
Also, currently this is only for client-side stuff - not for network tests (eg. it might be relevant to direct "http" alerts to different people, depending on which of the 5 URL's you check is down). That is for a later release.
You can grab the current snapshot and play with it, but be warned that I added this code yesterday and haven't had time to test it much - will do that over the week-end while I have on-call duty (hopefully nothing will happen).
Regards, Henrik