Red Hat NETWORK SATELLITE 5.1.1 - RELEASE NOTES, Reference Manual

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Notifications
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Two additional packages will also be downloaded in the transaction. These are needed for the
mysql-server
package to be installed and run successfully. Once finished, your Satellite may be
used to schedule
MySQL
probes.
7.4. Notifications
In addition to viewing probe status within the RHN interface, you may be notified whenever a probe
changes state. This is especially important when monitoring mission-critical production systems. For
this reason, Red Hat recommends taking advantage of this feature.
To enable probe notifications within RHN, you must have identified a mail exchange server and mail
domain during installation of your RHN Satellite Server and configured
sendmail
to properly handle
incoming mail. Refer to the
Installation
chapter of the
RHN Satellite Server Installation Guide
for
details.
7.4.1. Creating Notification Methods
Notifications are sent via a
notification method
, an email or pager address associated with a
specific RHN user. Although the address is tied to a particular user account, it may serve multiple
administrators through an alias or mailing list. Each user account can contain multiple notification
methods. To create a notification method:
1. Log into the RHN website as either an Satellite Administrator or Monitoring Administrator.
2. Navigate to the
User Details � Notification Methods
tab and click
create new method
.
3. Enter an intuitive, descriptive label for the method name, such as
DBA day email
, and provide
the correct email or pager address. Remember, the labels for all notification methods are available
in a single list during probe creation, so they should be unique to your organization.
4. Select the checkbox if you desire abbreviated messages to be sent to the pager. This shorter
format contains only the probe state, system hostname, probe name, time of message, and Send
ID. The standard, longer format displays additional message headers, system and probe details,
and instructions for response.
5. When finished, click
Create Method
. The new method shows up in the
User Details � Notification
Methods
tab and the
Notification
page under the top
Monitoring
category. Click its name to edit
or delete it.
6. While adding probes, select the
Probe Notifications
checkbox and select the new notification
method from the resulting dropdown menu. Notification methods assigned to probes cannot be
deleted until they are dis-associated from the probe.
7.4.2. Receiving Notifications
If you create notification methods and associate them with probes, you must be prepared to receive
them. These notifications come in the form of brief text messages sent to either email or pager
addresses. Here is an example of an email notification:
Subject: CRITICAL: [hostname]: Satellite: Users at 1
From: "Monitoring Satellite Notification" (rogerthat01@redhat.com)
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2004 13:42:28 -0800
To: user@organization.com