I am running Xymon 4.3.0-0.beta2 on a Dell R-610 running CentOS 5.x. I have a pair of them.
We have multiple virtual Exchange servers on Win2003 server.
All are reporting ‘mem’ problems up to 104%.
We currently use the Quest BB 4.00 Windows client as I converted the main server from BB to Xymon over 2 years ago.
Haven't used a Quest/BB client in years, and certainly not this one, so I am guessing - albeit a rather qualified guess.
Currently we want to stop the client from monitoring the ‘mem’.[...] Quest says to add this parameter to the bb-host file of ‘nomem’ – this does not seem to do anything.
My guess is that this - on a Big Brother server - would work somewhat like "noping" does, i.e. it causes the server to ignore a red status and instead it shows a "clear" status.
Xymon doesn't have an exact equivalent. There is a "NOCOLUMNS" setting, but it will currently not work for clients that generate the status message themselves, only for Xymon clients where data is analyzed on the Xymon server.
Disabling the test, is not the answer as it bounces up and down all day long.
Why can't you just disable it for 5 years ? A time-based disable is not affected by the status bouncing red/green, it stays in effect until the time expires.
I also tried to add an entry for each host in the /home/xymon/client/etc/localclient.cfg and to hobbitclient.cfg at the bottom of the file:
These files only have effect on systems running a Xymon client; it requires the client to send "raw" data into the Xymon server, which the xymond_client running on the Xymon server will then analyze and change into status messages.
It seems to me that you are not getting the support you pay for. A client reporting "104 % memory used" is obviously broken - a system cannot use more memory than it has. So trying to "fix" it by removing the memory-column from your display and/or disabling alerts is a non-solution; it hides the underlying problem instead of solving it. I mean - if they get the memory-utilisation wrong, how do you know the other data is correct ? Can you trust the other data it is reporting ? Can you trust the memory-numbers it reports from your other systems ?
I haven't written the code for it, but I guess it would be fairly easy to implement something similar to "nomem", if all this does is to ignore the memory status coming from a host. An extension of the current "NOCOLUMNS" setting, so it works on all statuses - whether generated by a Xymon client or sent directly to the Xymon server. But I honestly don't think that is the correct solution.
Any chance of putting a BBWin client on those systems ? You could set it up for "central" mode and manage the configuration on the Xymon server, as you do with the Xymon unix clients - so your Windows admins wouldn't have to learn how to edit the BBWin XML config file.
Regards, Henrik