Re: {bb} External Script and blue color

[Jeff Stoner <leapfrog@freeshell.org>]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Philip Clark wrote:

> First the caveat. I don't recall ever having to do this, it is just
> an opinion. There may be some "elephant traps" ahead that I'm not
> seeing.

Agree. This falls outside BB's philosophy of "look but don't touch." Cave 
Canum.

> I think that I would favour the "short circuit" method. Just make a
> change to your script so that, prior to performing the test, it queries
> the current test status. Then, if the test is currently disabled, the
> script can exit without performing the test.
>
> If the script is running on your BB server, you would be able to
> access the required file directly. Otherwise, if the script runs

Last time I looked, each host-service log file had these columns:
text-day
text-month
number-day(blank padded)
time(24-hour format)
year(4-digit)
color
epoch-time
duration(in seconds)

You only need to examine the last line and it should not have a duration 
since that color is the most recent. Parsing the line is an exercise left 
to the reader. If the color is blue, abort running the test. If it's any 
other color, continue as required.

> on a client, you would probably have to query the status over HTTP.
> In either case, I'd try and start the test again before the disabled
> status is due to expire, to ensure that you don't end up with
> unnecessary "purples".

I wrote a cgi script that accomplishes just this in a very easy-to-parse 
format. Search for "host_status" on deadcat.net and you'll find it. Just 
remember, each test that does this puts an extra hit on your web server 
every 5 minutes...and cgi scripts written in shell aren't very efficient.


--Jeff

"I am not available for comment"

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