Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:32:15 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> To: Kurt Buff <kurt.buff@gmail.com> Cc: Jo Rhett <jrhett@svcolo.com>, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: how much beer do I need to get this patch applied? Message-ID: <20070620203215.GA73521@eos.sc1.parodius.com> In-Reply-To: <a9f4a3860706201256s5c4543d6t93448c9c12cf3439@mail.gmail.com> References: <E745210E-A5B8-48E0-B6A8-A467F1054BD7@svcolo.com> <20070620151306.GM45993@therub.org> <20070620115023971992.49dc4616@kjsl.com> <20070620164749.GN45993@therub.org> <a9f4a3860706201040u1f7e89eane68a7588cd017b96@mail.gmail.com> <44A91A3E-96EA-46F3-ABE4-01C4662B5A5F@svcolo.com> <a9f4a3860706201256s5c4543d6t93448c9c12cf3439@mail.gmail.com>
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On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 12:56:46PM -0700, Kurt Buff wrote: > On 6/20/07, Jo Rhett <jrhett@svcolo.com> wrote: > > If I get a message every day saying "No output", how do I know when a > > failure has occurred? This patch changes nothing about that > > behavior. Getting no message is equally useless in the situation > > where no output was generated *AND* the result code is positive. > > Currently, if you get no message from that box, *something* is broken. Daily Emails with no useful information in them will, by default, get ignored by most SAs. I happen to be one of those SAs, and this is how I have operated for 15+ years. Every SA co-worker I've had has run off the same mentality: "make noise if there's a problem. Silence means things are good." I think this is generally how UNIX operates as well; it gets messy when programmers don't do things like handle error conditions properly (fopen() failed? exit(0) and say nothing!), but programs like that are usually sniffed out and the programmer shunned. If that's not enough for you, let's use cronjobs as an example (and probably the best example). cron by default ONLY MAILS YOU when there's output on stdout/stderr. There's a reason you find 2>&1 >/dev/null in lots of cronjob entries: because people want silence if they don't care things might break. The inverse of that is when things get noisy, things are broken. cron *does not* mail you daily saying "Hey man, things are OK!" > > 3. Actual errors *will* be reported, and *will be read* if I don't > > have to delete thousands of non-errors. > > Perhaps a separate mailbox dedicated to this task, with a script > (grep?) that parses the emails in that mailbox daily looking for > expected messages, noting and deleting them, with unsent messages > noted via an email and messages with unexpected content forwarded as > well? I think by "unsent" you mean "remaining" (that is, messages not deleted are obvious signs of a problem, thus spawning an Email saying "hey there's messages in this queue still, check it out"). I understand your POV, but I disagree with it. Maybe I'm biased because I work in a NOC, where if we received empty Emails that said nothing other than "No output", after 24 hours we'd be hunting down the responsible owner of the cronjob/script to strangle them. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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