6. vt100 monitoring interface

6.1 Running the vt100 interface

6.1.1 Running using supplied script

In the scripts directory there is a console.sh script. You can start the console application using this in which case it will obtain the server ipaddress and port number from the config.txt file you customised earlier in chapter 2.
The config.txt file also contains the default number of lines and line length for the display.

6.1.2 Running manually, customised

The defaults may not suit many users who have customised the line lengths of their terminal emulators. They can run it manually using the syntax below. This requires that they know the port and ip-address the alert collector server is listening on. The alert_console program is in the main installation directory of the toolkit. 

      alert_console [ port [ ipaddress ] \
                [LINELEN=nn] [NUMLINES=nn] [BLINKOFF]]

      port is the port number the server is listening on
      ipaddress is the ip-address of the server
      LINELEN controls the width of the line lines
      NUMLINES controls how many lines will be displayed
      BLINKOFF will display acknowledged alerts as normal
               text rather than blinking text.

    The defaults are
	9003 127.0.0.1 LINELEN=127 NUMLINES=24
you must provide both the port and ipaddress if you wish to provide any of the other parameters.

Tip: I have my customised settings set as an alias in my .bashrc. Thats probably the best place for each user if they want to customide there own settings.

6.2 Console display

The suppled console interface is designed for a VT100 24 line screen, as such it will display a maximum of 23 outstanding alerts, and leave a line for command input.

Critical alerts will be in reverse text, acknowledged alerts in blinking text (unless overidden as noted above), warning and informational alert messages will be in normal text.

The console application refreshes it's display automatically every 60 seconds.

The vt100 alert monitor display

6.3 Commands available

At the console command line the following commands are available to the user. 

 s     - show details for an alert
 a     - acknowledge an alert
 d     - delete an alert
 du    - delete all displayed alerts until selected alert
 q                    - quit
 refresh              - force an immediate refresh

6.4 Running it once to get a snapshot

A facility is provided to run the console program to display the alerts only once, then drop back to the prompt. This may be of limited use to you but I place it in my .bashrc (after checking to ensure I'm on a tty or it upsets my batch jobs) so every time I logon I get to see if alerts are outstanding without actually having to start a full monitoring session. 

syntax: alert_console port ipaddress ONCEONLY
example:alert_console 9003 127.0.0.1 ONCEONLY

End of chapter 6