SiteScope User's Guide

News Monitor

The SiteScope News Monitor verifies that a news server can be connected to, and is responding. It also measures how long it takes to make a connection, and how many articles are currently in the specified news groups.

Each time the News Monitor runs, it returns a status message and writes it in the monitoring log file. It also writes the total time it takes to receive a response from the news server, and the number of articles available for each of the specified news groups.

Usage Guidelines

Why should I use this monitor?

Running the News Monitor on a regular basis can save you the headaches associated with the entire office coming in to tell you they can't read their news groups. With regular monitoring, you should be able to address any problems before the hordes notice anything's amiss.

In addition, you can manage the number of articles that are allowed to queue up, deleting them before they cause disk space problems.

What should I monitor?

You should monitor any news servers that you have running.

How should I schedule my monitors?

It's usually sufficient to monitor your news server every 10 minutes or so. If you notice that you're having problems, you can schedule the monitor(s) to run more frequently.

Status

The reading is the current value of the monitor. The possible values for the News Monitor are:

OK
unknown host name
unable to reach server
unable to connect to server
timed out reading
<news group> not found - the given news group was not found on the news server
permission denied for connection - the connection could not be made, probably because the news server was configured to allow connections from a limited range of addresses.
login expected - the news server expected a user name and password, but none were provided. In this case, enter a user name and password under the Advanced Options section of the monitor.
login failed, unauthorized - the user name and password were not accepted by the news server

The status is logged as either good or error. An error status is returned if the current value of the monitor is anything other than OK.

Completing the News Monitor Form

To display the News Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing News Monitor listed in a monitor table, or click the Add a new Monitor to this Group link on a group's detail page and choose the New News Monitor link.

Complete the items on the News Monitor form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

News Server: Enter the IP address or the name of the news server that you want to monitor. For example, you could enter either 206.168.191.21 or news.thiscompany.com. If the port is not the standard news port, add the port after the server with a colon - for example, news.thiscompany.com:7777.
News Groups: Optionally enter a one or more news groups that will be checked, separated by commas. Each of these news groups will be checked for the current number of articles available in that news group - the reading of the monitor is the sum of articles available for each of the specified news groups.
Update every: Enter how frequently the monitor should try to reach the host. The pull-down menu to the right of the text box lets you specify time increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. You must specify a time increment of at least 15 seconds.
Title (Optional): Enter a name for this monitor. This name appears in the Name text box on the monitor table when you open the group's detail page. If you don't enter a name, a default name will be created.

Advanced Options

The advanced options give you the ability to customize error and warning thresholds, or complete optional settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Timeout

The number of seconds that the News monitor should wait for all of news transactions to complete before timing-out. Once this time period passes, the News monitor will log an error and report an error status.

User Name (Optional)

If your News server requires authorization, enter a valid user name here.

Password (Optional)

If your News server requires authorization, enter a valid password here.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Schedule (Optional)

By default, SiteScope's monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Choose the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For information about creating schedules, read these instructions.

Monitor Description (Optional)

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description (Optional)

Enter a description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what this monitor does. The description will appear on Management Reports and on the info list for a monitor.

Depends On (Optional)

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor or group on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition (Optional)

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, choose the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor or group on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order (Optional)

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Error if

This advanced option allows you to customize the conditions under which the News Monitor generates an error status message. By default SiteScope generates an error if the returned status is anything other than 200. You can change this to generate an error based on the average length of the round trip times or the number of articles present. To change the default choose an option from the drop-down list, select a comparison value symbol, and enter the lowest value that should trigger an error in the text entry box.

Warning if

This advanced option allows you to customize the conditions under which the News Monitor generates a warning status message. By default, the News monitor does not have a warning threshold, but you can set this option to define one based upon round-trip time or number of articles present.

Good if

SiteScope reports a good state if the status returned is 200. You can change this to be based upon round-trip time or number of articles present.