On 03/01/2026 18:42, Grant Taylor via Xymon wrote:
If memory serves, the extensions run their test and output results that get added to the client log that's sent to the Xymon server. The Xymon server then parses them as necessary.
Extension scripts (whether client-side or server-side) just send a message to your xymon server saying "$TESTNAME has colour $COLOUR, message $MESSAGE etc". Look in "man xymon" under "XYMON MESSAGE SYNTAX", for the message-type of "status"
separately there's the suite of reports sent by /usr/lib/xymon/client/bin/xymonclient-linux.sh (or other similar scripts in that directory for other OSs). Run the script manually, and it'll just print a wall of text divided into sections with headers like [date], [uname] etc . When run by xymonclient.sh , that gets sent to your xymon server where it's parsed, with the resulting colours being determined by the contents of your analysis.cfg . For example the [df] section will lead to the report you see under the "disk" test. For full details see xymond/client/linux.c which parses the date from that shell script and sends the various sections to functions with names like unix_TESTNAME_report(). Those functions generally finish by sending a suitable "status" message to the xymon server, just like an extension script does when you call $bb->send().
I'm sending a few clear alerts with values (encoded in the way / with the tags that Xymon wants) so that the server can key on the values and standard alerting rules to alter the color. One mail server might alert on 10 messages in the mail queue while another might alert on 250 messages in the mail queue.
Possible note of caution: by default, clear-coloured messages don't lead to alerts. See the value of ALERTCOLORS in your xymonserver.cfg , which defaults to red, yellow, purple.
Adam