Users Guide

Troubleshooting 117
Troubleshooting
Setting Alert Actions for Systems Running Supported
Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Operating Systems
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 /dev/console. If the Server
Administrator system is running an X Window System, you will not see that message by default.
To see the alert message on a Red Hat
®
Enterprise Linux
®
system when the X Window System is
running, you must start xconsole or xterm -C before the event occurs. To see the alert message on a
SUSE
®
Linux Enterprise Server system when the X Window System is running, you must start
xterm -C 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 an X Window System, you will not see that message by default. To see the broadcast message
when the X Window System is running, you must start a terminal such as xterm or gnome-terminal
before the event occurs.
NOTE: On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (Version 9), messages sent by wall are displayed by the xterm
terminal program but not by the Konsole terminal program.
When you set Alert Actions for an event, you can specify the action to Execute 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
Absolute path to the application box.