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Omry
Asked: 2010-04-30 12:15:27 +0800 CST

monit syntax error : "if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then alert"

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I am trying to get an alert from monit if it fails to restart a service 5 times, but I get a syntax error

/etc/monit/monit.d/engine.conf:5: Error: syntax error 'alert'

any idea what's wrong with it?

/etc/monit/monitrc:

set daemon  120
set mailserver localhost

set eventqueue
    basedir /var/monit  # set the base directory where events will be stored
    slots 100           # optionaly limit the queue size


set httpd port 2812
  allow localhost

set logfile syslog

set alert root@localhost

include /etc/monit/monit.d/*

/etc/monit/monit.d/engine.conf (The only file in monit.d) :

check process engine with pidfile /var/run/engine.pid
   group engine
   start program = "/etc/init.d/engine start"
   stop  program = "/etc/init.d/engine stop"
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then alert

version:

# monit -V
This is monit version 4.10.1
linux monit

5 Answers

  1. It looks like support for this was added in monit 5.1
    From the changelog at http://mmonit.com/monit/dist/CHANGES.txt :

    Version 5.1

NEW FEATURES AND FUNCTIONS:

It is now possible to define any action for the restart timeout rule.
  Multiple restart timeout rules can also be defined. Example:
  if 3 restarts within 5 cycles then exec "/foo/bar"
  if 8 restarts within 10 cycles then unmonitor

    I was trying to use the exact same syntax as you (for the exact same reason), and found it was working on one server but another. When I compared versions, I found one was 5.2.5 and the other was 4.10.1

    So the answer it seems is to upgrade to at least 5.1

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  2. I think it looks fine. Have you tried re-typing that line to rule out any hidden characters messing up the line?

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  3. Have you got a set alert <email_address> defined prior to this configuration?

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  4. Ok,found the error. alert is not a valid event and you need to specify an event that will generate an alert. Without a specific event monit wouldn't know what to say to you.

    List of events from the manpage:

    This is the list of events you can use in a mail-filter: uid, gid, size, nonexist, data, icmp, instance, invalid, exec, changed, timeout, resource, checksum, match, timestamp, connection, permission

    In your case I'd recommend exec. The full list of messages is:

        Event:    | Failure state:          | Recovery state:
    ---------------------------------------------------------------
    CHANGED   | "Changed"               | "Changed back"
    CHECKSUM  | "Checksum failed"       | "Checksum passed"
    CONNECTION| "Connection failed"     | "Connection passed"
    DATA      | "Data access error"     | "Data access succeeded"
    EXEC      | "Execution failed"      | "Execution succeeded"
    GID       | "GID failed"            | "GID passed"
    ICMP      | "ICMP failed"           | "ICMP passed"
    INSTANCE  | "Monit instance changed"| "Monit instance changed not"
    INVALID   | "Invalid type"          | "Type passed"
    MATCH     | "Regex match"           | "No regex match"
    NONEXIST  | "Does not exist"        | "Exists"
    PERMISSION| "Permission failed"     | "Permission passed"
    RESOURCE  | "Resource limit matched"| "Resource limit passed"
    SIZE      | "Size failed"           | "Size passed"
    TIMEOUT   | "Timeout"               | "Timeout recovery"
    TIMESTAMP | "Timestamp failed"      | "Timestamp passed"
    UID       | "UID failed"            | "UID passed"

    Best of luck,
    João Miguel Neves

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  5. I noticed something strange with alert and unmonitor parameter in monit 5.4-2 : If you use unmonitor parameter in the alert config line, it generates a syntax error :

    alert [email protected] on { uid, gid, unmonitor
    } with the mail-format { subject: Alarm! }

    When restarting monit, you get :

    Error: syntax error 'unmonitor'

    I solved this problem removing unmonitor in arguments :

    alert [email protected] on { uid, gid
    } with the mail-format { subject: Alarm! }

    I can't see the syntax change... Strange... Isn't it ?

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