HP-UX Event ManagerAdministrator's Guide

Introduction
Event Manager Events
Chapter 1 27
Event Manager Events
An Event Manager event is a binary package of data that contains a set
of standard data items, including a name, a timestamp, and information
about the poster. An event may contain variable data, which is named
and supplied by the poster. For example, an event reporting the failure of
a device may hold variables containing the path name and type of the
device. Events are created and posted by an posting client, and
distributed to other clients by the daemon. The receiving process extracts
and processes the information contained in the event.
Although the logger captures posted events and stores them in a system
log file, you can easily capture your own set of events and store them in
your own file for later analysis. You use the evmwatch monitoring utility,
or reconfigure the logger to capture your own events.
An event is an indication that some important event has occurred – an
action has been taken, some condition has been met, or it is time to
confirm that an application is still operational. A particular event may be
important to the administrator or to some other class of system user. A
system event can also be significant to the following system entities:
• System monitoring software
• Operating system software
• End-user application programs
• Hardware components
Entities interested in events must be part of the local system.
When a system component has important event to report, it makes the
information available through an event channel. The event channel is a
facility used to publish or retrieve event information. Following are
examples of event channels:
• Log files, where messages are stored in a file that is usually in ASCII
text format
• Event management systems
• Programs that you run to obtain a snapshot of status information
An event management system is an active event channel and it provides
services for distributing, storing, and retrieving event information.