Verbose Messages

[posted 1999/09/03]

Whenever I set up a new alarm, I like to receive mail alerts about its operation just to reassure me that it's doing its intended job.  After a time, however, the verbose messages becoming tiring. It gets to be a nuisance hearing about routine "chmod'ed <this>" or "truncated <that>".

Case in point:  I recently developed the NumberedSyslogFileNotice alarm, shown below.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

NumberedSyslogFileNotice

        init
                status active
                level notice
                task "To report existence of, and to dispose of,
                      syslog.[0-9]* files"
                input proc "=ll =syslog\.[0-9]* 2> /dev/null"
                =lldata

        rule    // only delete syslog files greater than five days old
                if #fileage($mon,$date,$time) > 5
                        output mail "deleting: $inline"
#ifdef doexec
                        exec wait "=rm -f $name"
#elsedef
                        output mail  "=rm -f $name"
#endifdef
                endif

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Having finally grown tired of seeing many such "deleting: ..." messages stuffing my mailbox, this morning I began to implement my usual fix of commenting out the "output mail" line:

                        // output mail "deleting: $inline"

Then I thought:  No, there's a better way.  Here's a new addition to my defines.cfg file:

verbose FALSE           // if TRUE, output mail about routine execs, such as
                        // "deleting <this>" or "truncating <that>"; usually
                        // set this to FALSE; but occasionally set this to
                        // TRUE to get a fuller report of all that PIKT is
                        // doing silently, behind-the-scenes

Now, instead of commenting out reports of routine exec actions, I put an #ifdef wrapper around them instead:

#ifdef verbose
                        output mail "deleting: $inline"
#endifdef

I have revisited my alarms.cfg file and added a couple dozen such #ifdef's where before I had simply commented out.

Whenever I feel the need to do a full audit of everything that PIKT is doing, I will reinstall all files with the command:

# piktc -iv +D verbose ALL

After the audit--i.e., after reviewing the newly verbose messages for several days--I will put things back to normal with the command

# piktc -iv ALL

where the "-D verbose" is unnecessary because the verbose define is set to FALSE in defines.cfg by default.

The line between too much PIKT mail and just enough PIKT mail is a fine one. The "#ifdef verbose" trick makes it easier to achieve the proper balance.

Note that #ifdef verbose" is not the same as my "#ifdef stifle".  I use the latter to suppress nagmail about things I need to know about but don't need to be reminded about constantly.  Things like orphaned accounts, which don't require immediate attention but which I don't want to forget about altogether.

For more examples, see Developer's Notes.