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Re: [nv-l] Ruleset editor for Windows?

To: nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com
Subject: Re: [nv-l] Ruleset editor for Windows?
From: James Shanks <jshanks@us.ibm.com>
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:08:47 -0500
Delivery-date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:22:11 +0000
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Have you tried the NetView ruleset you spoke of?  That's 
downandnotupinten.rs isn't it?.  I didn't think even that one was 
constructed so that it would work.

That's another problem on Windows. Some of the samples don't work, and 
some that do, don't work correctly.  Never have.  They were things that 
the original developer was playing with and never should have shipped, in 
my opinion.  But if you can get downandnotupinten.rs to work for NetView 
events, then you should be able to edit it with Wordpad and replace the 
NetView OID with the Cisco OID and the NetView trap numbers with the Cisco 
ones (for what, LinkUp, Link Down?) and then it should work, but that's a 
very big "if".

What I don't quite follow is why you would do this at all,  since NetView 
will tell you the same thing that the Cisco traps would tell you, wouldn't 
it?

James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group




CMazon@commercebankfl.com
Sent by: owner-nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com
12/19/2003 05:16 PM
Please respond to nv-l

 
        To:     nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: [nv-l] Ruleset editor for Windows?




Thanks for the info James.  What I wanted to do is create a similar 
ruleset to what is already there for the Node down for 10 minutes, however 
instead of using Netview's traps, we wanted to use Cisco's traps with the 
same general idea. Wait 10 or 5 minutes and then generate and event/trap 
if the interface did not come back up so that an alert (email) can be 
sent. We are not using TEC which I know can probably do this for us so I 
was hoping to use the builtin features of Netview. But if I understand 
what you are stating with the first apar mentioned below, this ruleset is 
not functional because it keeps detecting the same agent as coming up or 
down so If I have a 2 down node events, and one comes up, it automaticly 
stops the rule since it detected the same agent as up.  (Correct me if I 
am wrong.)   

I can see now why almost everyone uses Netview for AIX or Solaris but it 
is hard me to justify a Unix box just for one product when we are a totaly 
Windows environment.  Are there any similar limits to using Netview for 
Linux.  I know in the previous versions there was no data store house (DB) 
for Linux but not sure for the new version?  Would I get similar 
functionality (if not complete) in Linux as compared to Unix? What about 
using a Windows client with a Linux server (I believe this not possible)? 

Thanks again 

Carlos 



James Shanks <jshanks@us.ibm.com> 
Sent by: owner-nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com 
12/19/2003 04:50 PM 
Please respond to nv-l 
        
        To:        nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com 
        cc:         
        Subject:        Re: [nv-l] Ruleset editor for Windows?




There is no ruleset editor for Windows and there is not likely to be one, 
because the usefulness of ruleset on Windows is nothing like what it is on 
UNIX. 

There is no actionsvr, no way to remove events from the event display, and 
some ruleset nodes like the pager and the (off-line) action node, do not 
work at all on Windows.  These limitations can be overcome, if you are 
clever and dedicated, but even then, the results may not be what you 
expect. 

Yes, NetView Linux does have a ruleset editor.  But even after you port 
your UNIX rule to Windows, it may have to be modified in order to work 
correctly. 
There are some guidelines in the Windows Programmer's Guide,  concerning 
how to edit an rs file, but it is not much.  Just be sure to use WordPad, 
and not NotePad, or you will corrupt the file and nvcord will fail trying 
to load it. 

So you must be very, very careful about what you are trying to accomplish 
with rulesets on Windows.   The original design saw them only as providing 
additional filtering capabilities for the Event Browser, which is why the 
samples are so lame,  but beyond that the implementation leaves a lot to 
be desired.  To understand why, remember that on Windows, all events are 
stored directly in the ODBC database by trapd.  And the Event Browser 
reads events from the ODBC database.  There is no event flow on Windows 
like there is on UNIX with nvcorrd in the middle.  So every thing that 
nvcord (notice the spelling difference on Windows) does with an event on 
Windows is after the fact.  This results in some rather strange design 
issues. 

First, every successful ruleset on Windows will create a new, near 
duplicate event of the original event and store this near duplicate back 
in the ODBC database.  That's because the original one is already in there 
and cannot be modified.  So when you use the "ALL Events" filter instead 
of the ruleset custom filter, you will see both the original event and the 
duplicates too.  This may seem very confusing and most people don't care 
for it.  When you use the ruleset as a custom filter, you will see only 
the events which it created.   

Second, each near duplicate event gets a new first varbind inserted, an 
integer which tells the Event Browser what ruleset was used to create the 
near duplicate.  That's how the Event Browser knows which ones to display 
for each ruleset.   But because there is a new first varbind, all the 
original varbinds are "pushed down" one position; old varbind one becomes 
new varbind two, varbind two becomes three, and so on, which can mess up 
how the event is displayed, depending on how it is formatted in 
trapd.conf.  As I said, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. But 
that's how it works.  For simple cases, it is reliable enough, but not 
very useful in my opinion. 

However, there are two open APARs on this function as I write this.  One 
is for the fact that the agent address is corrupted in the near duplicate 
events.  No matter what agent sent them, the new event has the NetView box 
itself as the agent.  And the other is that a ruleset which wishes to 
override the status or severity of an event, such as the 
setstatusseverity.rs which ships with the product, will cause severe 
problems because that function is broken.     Eventually both of these 
problems will be fixed, but they are not now.   

Thus, as a general rule, rulesets on Windows should be avoided, except in 
special circumstances. 
Just what did you want to do with them?

James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Tivoli Software / IBM Software Group 


CMazon@commercebankfl.com 
Sent by: owner-nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com 
12/19/2003 03:52 PM 
Please respond to nv-l 
        
       To:        nv-l@lists.us.ibm.com 
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       Subject:        [nv-l] Ruleset editor for Windows? 





Netview 7.1.4 Windows 2000 

Is there a guide to manually write a ruleset for windows? I know there is 
no rule set editor for windows and we do not have the resources to set up 
a Unix flavor of the product.  I would like to understand the variables in 
the file and how they are set in the file itself so that I may be able to 
create some simple rulesets for our needs. 


Is the ruleset editor available in Netview for Linux, I may be able to run 
a virtual PC with Linux and set that up just for that purpose. 

Thanks. 

Carlos. 




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