Siebel Log File Monitor

The Siebel Log File Monitor watches for log file entries added to a group of log files by looking for entries containing a specific event type or subtype.

Each time the Siebel Log File Monitor runs, it examines only those log entries added since the last time it ran.

Usage Guidelines

The Siebel Log File Monitor is useful for automatically scanning multiple log files for error information. With SiteScope doing this for you at set intervals, you can eliminate the need to scan the logs manually. In addition, you can be notified of warning conditions that you might have otherwise been unaware of until something more serious happened.

Each time that it runs this monitor, SiteScope starts from the point in the file where it stopped reading last time it ran. This insures that you are only notified of new entries and speeds the rate at which the monitor runs.

Note: This behavior can be overridden but is not recommended and should only be done for trouble-shooting purposes.

About scheduling this monitor

You can schedule your Siebel Log File Monitors to run as often as every 15 seconds. However, depending on the size of the log files, the total number of monitors you have running, and whether the Search from Start option is selected, the monitor may take a considerable amount of time to run. The default update schedule is every 10 minutes which may be reasonable in most cases.

Completing the Siebel Log File Monitor Form

To display the Siebel Log File Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing Siebel Log File Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and click the Add Siebel Log File Monitor link.

Complete the items on the Siebel Log File Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Server

Select the server where the log files you want to monitor are located. Note: This monitor does not support UNIX remotes at this time.

Log File Directory

Enter the pathname to the log directory you want to monitor.

To monitor log files on a remote Windows NT/2000 server through NetBIOS specify a UNC path to the remote directory. For example,
\\remoteserver\logFileDirectory

Note: If you are using SSH as a connection method to the remote NT server you will need to select the java library and ssh1 options for that remote.

File Name

Select the log files that you want to monitor. A regular expression must be used to specify multiple files. However, be warned that selecting too many log files to monitor can significantly degrade overall SiteScope performance. Note: The search is not recursive and will only match files listed within the log file directory.

Severity

Select the severity level of entries to consider for matching. Entries that have the correct event type/subtype and have an equal or greater severity will be matched, those with a lesser severity will be ignored.

Event Type

Select the matching event type or subtype. The monitor will report how many log entries were found of the specified type.

Update every

Select how often the monitor should read the log files. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.

Search from Start

Select file checking option for this monitor instance. This setting controls what SiteScope will loook for and how much of the target file will be checked each time that the monitor is run. The following table describes the options for this setting:

Checking Option

Description

Off

Check only newly added records, starting at the time that the monitor was created (not when the file was created). This is the default behavior.

Always check the contents of the whole file.

Note: Use of this option may have undesired impact on SiteScope performance. Monitoring large numbers of log files with this option may use large amounts of memory and CPU time on the SiteScope server which can lead to other performance problems.

Title

Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule

By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.

Monitor Description

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description

Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.

Depends On

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Error if

Set an error threshold for this monitor. The thresholds are used when the "Run Alerts: once, ..." option is chosen. By default, an error is signaled whenever there is one or more matching events. Select a comparison value from the list, and use the comparison operator list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than).

The possible comparison values are:

matches - the number of matches found.
lines - the number of lines processed.
lines/min - the number of lines per minute processed during this monitoring period.
matches/min - the number of matches per minute that occurred during this monitoring period.

Warning if

Set the Warning threshold for this monitor. The default is to generate a warning if SiteScope is unable to read the log file. The symbols in the comparison value drop-down list are the same as those for Error if.

Good if

The default is to mark the monitor as good if the log file can be read and there are no matches.