Users Guide

Appendix 131
Appendix
Setting Alert Actions for Systems Running a Supported
Red Hat
®
Enterprise Linux Operating System
When you set Alert Actions for an event, you can specify the action to "display an alert on the
server." To perform this action, Server Administrator writes a message to the console. If the Server
Administrator system is running X Window System, you will not see that message by default. To see
the alert message when X Window System is running, you must start xconsole before the event
occurs.
When you set Alert Actions for an event, you can specify the action to "broadcast a message." To
perform this action, Server Administrator executes the "wall" command, which sends the message to
everybody logged in with their message permission set to "yes." If the Server Administrator system is
running X Window System, you will not see that message by default. To see the broadcast message
when X Window System is running, you must start a terminal such as "gnome-terminal" before the
event occurs.
When you set Alert Actions for an event, you can specify the action to "execute an application."
There are limitations on the applications that Server Administrator can execute. Follow these
guidelines to ensure proper execution:
• Do not specify X Window System based applications because Server Administrator cannot
execute such applications properly.
• Do not specify applications that require input from the user because Server Administrator cannot
execute such applications properly.
• Redirect
stdout and stderr to a file when specifying the application so that you can see any output
or error messages.
• If you want to execute multiple applications (or commands) for an alert, create a script to do that
and put the full path to the script in the "application to execute" box.
Example 1:
ps -ef >/tmp/psout.txt 2>&1
The command in Example 1 executes the application ps , redirects stdout to the file
/tmp/psout.txt , and redirects stderr to the same file as stdout .