I concur with Brian. The most likely reason for the ":q" was an errant vi quit command.
Looks like a ":s" would be valid. I'll refer you to the manpage for host.cfg ( http://xymon.sourceforge.net/xymon/help/manpages/man5/hosts.cfg.5.html), under the heading "Simple Network Tests". My reading of that suggests that you would use that configuration directive to tell Xymon not to send any of the test data defined for the service from the protocols.cfg file.
I'll also point out, that the :21 isn't necessary either. This would only be necessary if you wanted to test a service that would be running on a non-standard port. The example given is ssh. Ordinarily, that runs on port 22, but if you wanted to perform an SSH test listening on port 8022, you would use "ssh:8022".
The default port number is defined in protocols.cfg ( http://xymon.sourceforge.net/xymon/help/manpages/man5/protocols.cfg.5.html) . If a port number for a defined service is not found, it will use what is defined in /etc/services, if one can be found.
Erik D. Schminke | Associate Systems Programmer Hormel Foods Corporation | One Hormel Place | Austin, MN 55912 Phone: (507) 434-6817 edschminke at hormel.com | www.hormelfoods.com