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Conference azur::mcc

Title:DECmcc user notes file. Does not replace IPMT.
Notice:Use IPMT for problems. Newsletter location in note 6187
Moderator:TAEC::BEROUD
Created:Mon Aug 21 1989
Last Modified:Wed Jun 04 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:6497
Total number of notes:27359

1052.0. "Batch alarms bug??? or ..." by ZPOVC::RAMARAJ () Fri May 24 1991 23:17

I was playing with the alarms and came across somthing strange.

I am using the SYSTEM account for DECmcc.
I have put all the alarms creation( polling and events type), abt 20, in 
a command file. All the alarms are created but not enabled.

Another file contains the enabling commands and is submitted as batch, at
system startup time.
Yes, this command file has final statement to keep it resident.

SUBMIT/USER=ALARMS XXXXX.COM
with another account's default.

When the iconic map is opened up and the rules brought up, the status of all
rules show disabled.  Even on command line MCC, it shows disabled.

BUT, the alarms fire, notification is received on the iconic map and mails,
broadcast, log entries are created.

No doubt it works, it gives a misleading information that the rules are not
enabled.

Are there special considerations or is there some problem, when 
activating alarm rules through batch.


Raj
SWS Singapore

T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
DateLines
1052.1call it what you want...TOOK::CALLANDERJill Callander DTN 226-5316Tue May 28 1991 14:238
this is a known "restriction" within the MCC1.1 kit. The alarms only
show state=enabled from the process where the rule was enabled. From
all other locations it will show up as disabled, and with no counters.

There were a number of reasons why this was implemented in this fashion,
ranging from security issues, to base system limitations. This is QAR
#71 in the mCC_INTERNAL database. Work I believe is scheduled in this
area for V1.2 or V2.0 I am not sure, some one from that team can comment.
1052.2V1.2 Ultrix has it now!WAKEME::ANILTue May 28 1991 18:0118
     Raj,

     As Jill has poited out in .1, what you observed is not a bug but a
     feature of V1.1 of Alarms. :-(.

     Well here is the good news. On the Ultrix implementation of DECmcc, Alarms
     is always ON! Thanks to the execution model implemented by Jim Swist,
     even if you exit MCC, all your (enabled) rules will remain enabled. 

     For agive user, the status of the rule will always reflect the correct
     state of the rule. i.e. Alarms will not lie!

     It is quite possible that this model will be back ported to VMS in
     V1.2.  No guarantees though! ;-)

     So stay tunes!

     - Anil Navkal
1052.3Always, or until reboot?ASD::MINTZErik Mintz, MS ZKO3-2/S11, dtn 381-2331Tue May 28 1991 18:427
>     Well here is the good news. On the Ultrix implementation of DECmcc, Alarms
>     is always ON! Thanks to the execution model implemented by Jim Swist,
>     even if you exit MCC, all your (enabled) rules will remain enabled. 

At least until the system reboots, after which time someone has to manually
re-start the alarms FM, right?  

1052.4right.TOOK::CALLANDERJill Callander DTN 226-5316Tue May 28 1991 20:110
1052.5on ultrix: automatically restarted w/rules disabled?TOOK::GUERTINI do this for a living -- reallyWed May 29 1991 11:3918
    RE:.3
    
    On Ultrix, Management Modules should not need to be restarted manually.
    The "foreground" MM (almost always a PM) simply makes a request, and
    the MM gets restarted automatically.  The Alarms-FM does not separate
    "foreground" and "background", so it does not know what the state of
    the Alarms-FM process was prior to the reboot.  Hence the rules (I
    assume) would all be in a disabled state.  Perhaps in some future
    release the Alarms team could add in the capabilities of "turning on",
    or "shutting off" the detection mechanism (the service portion, as
    opposed to the management portion of Alarms).  In this way they could
    discover that the detection mechanism should still be "detecting" and
    re-start it automatically (thereby enabling all the rules that should
    be enabled).  Naturally, they should post an MCC event saying that the
    detection mechanism had to be re-started, but that is veering off the
    subject a little.
    
    -Matt.
1052.6Naaahhhhhh.....TOOK::SWISTJim Swist LKG2-2/T2 DTN 226-7102Wed May 29 1991 15:2316
    re: last few
    
    Let us not confuse an accident of the implementation with a design
    feature.
    
    I believe that where possible MCC operations should behave the same
    regardless of how management modules actually get instantiated.  An MM
    like alarms which has some persistent state from mcc_call to mcc_call
    (and I'm talking about independent calls, not calls related by a
    handle), should not rely on keeping that state in volatile memory. 
    On VMS you lose that state on PM exit.  On Ultrix you lose it on reboot
    or on killing the FM).  You must make a non-volatile record of such
    state so that it can be remembered regardless of process structure.
    
    Failure to do so is a bug, not a side effect of the implementation.