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Custom

Netdata Agent's alert notification feature allows you to send custom notifications to any endpoint you choose.

Setup

Prerequisites

  • Access to the terminal where Netdata Agent is running

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is health_alarm_notify.conf.

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config health_alarm_notify.conf

Options

The following options can be defined for this notification

Config Options
NameDescriptionDefaultRequired
SEND_CUSTOMSet SEND_CUSTOM to YESYESyes
DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_CUSTOMThis value is dependent on how you handle the ${to} variable inside the custom_sender() function.yes
custom_sender()You can look at the other senders in /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/alarm-notify.sh for examples of how to modify the function in this configuration file.no
DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_CUSTOM

All roles will default to this variable if left unconfigured. You can edit DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_CUSTOM with the variable you want, in the following entries at the bottom of the same file:

role_recipients_custom[sysadmin]="systems"
role_recipients_custom[domainadmin]="domains"
role_recipients_custom[dba]="databases systems"
role_recipients_custom[webmaster]="marketing development"
role_recipients_custom[proxyadmin]="proxy-admin"
role_recipients_custom[sitemgr]="sites"
custom_sender()

The following is a sample custom_sender() function in health_alarm_notify.conf, to send an SMS via an imaginary HTTPS endpoint to the SMS gateway:

custom_sender() {
# example human readable SMS
local msg="${host} ${status_message}: ${alarm} ${raised_for}"

# limit it to 160 characters and encode it for use in a URL
urlencode "${msg:0:160}" >/dev/null; msg="${REPLY}"

# a space separated list of the recipients to send alarms to
to="${1}"

for phone in ${to}; do
httpcode=$(docurl -X POST \
--data-urlencode "From=XXX" \
--data-urlencode "To=${phone}" \
--data-urlencode "Body=${msg}" \
-u "${accountsid}:${accounttoken}" \
https://domain.website.com/)

if [ "${httpcode}" = "200" ]; then
info "sent custom notification ${msg} to ${phone}"
sent=$((sent + 1))
else
error "failed to send custom notification ${msg} to ${phone} with HTTP error code ${httpcode}."
fi
done
}

The supported variables that you can use for the function's msg variable are:

Variable nameDescription
${alarm}Like "name = value units"
${status_message}Like "needs attention", "recovered", "is critical"
${severity}Like "Escalated to CRITICAL", "Recovered from WARNING"
${raised_for}Like "(alarm was raised for 10 minutes)"
${host}The host generated this event
${url_host}Same as ${host} but URL encoded
${unique_id}The unique id of this event
${alarm_id}The unique id of the alarm that generated this event
${event_id}The incremental id of the event, for this alarm id
${when}The timestamp this event occurred
${name}The name of the alarm, as given in netdata health.d entries
${url_name}Same as ${name} but URL encoded
${chart}The name of the chart (type.id)
${url_chart}Same as ${chart} but URL encoded
${status}The current status : REMOVED, UNINITIALIZED, UNDEFINED, CLEAR, WARNING, CRITICAL
${old_status}The previous status: REMOVED, UNINITIALIZED, UNDEFINED, CLEAR, WARNING, CRITICAL
${value}The current value of the alarm
${old_value}The previous value of the alarm
${src}The line number and file the alarm has been configured
${duration}The duration in seconds of the previous alarm state
${duration_txt}Same as ${duration} for humans
${non_clear_duration}The total duration in seconds this is/was non-clear
${non_clear_duration_txt}Same as ${non_clear_duration} for humans
${units}The units of the value
${info}A short description of the alarm
${value_string}Friendly value (with units)
${old_value_string}Friendly old value (with units)
${image}The URL of an image to represent the status of the alarm
${color}A color in AABBCC format for the alarm
${goto_url}The URL the user can click to see the netdata dashboard
${calc_expression}The expression evaluated to provide the value for the alarm
${calc_param_values}The value of the variables in the evaluated expression
${total_warnings}The total number of alarms in WARNING state on the host
${total_critical}The total number of alarms in CRITICAL state on the host

Examples

Basic Configuration
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# custom notifications

SEND_CUSTOM="YES"
DEFAULT_RECIPIENT_CUSTOM=""

# The custom_sender() is a custom function to do whatever you need to do
custom_sender() {
# example human readable SMS
local msg="${host} ${status_message}: ${alarm} ${raised_for}"

# limit it to 160 characters and encode it for use in a URL
urlencode "${msg:0:160}" >/dev/null; msg="${REPLY}"

# a space separated list of the recipients to send alarms to
to="${1}"

for phone in ${to}; do
httpcode=$(docurl -X POST \
--data-urlencode "From=XXX" \
--data-urlencode "To=${phone}" \
--data-urlencode "Body=${msg}" \
-u "${accountsid}:${accounttoken}" \
https://domain.website.com/)

if [ "${httpcode}" = "200" ]; then
info "sent custom notification ${msg} to ${phone}"
sent=$((sent + 1))
else
error "failed to send custom notification ${msg} to ${phone} with HTTP error code ${httpcode}."
fi
done
}

Troubleshooting

Test Notification

You can run the following command by hand, to test alerts configuration:

# become user netdata
sudo su -s /bin/bash netdata

# enable debugging info on the console
export NETDATA_ALARM_NOTIFY_DEBUG=1

# send test alarms to sysadmin
/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/alarm-notify.sh test

# send test alarms to any role
/usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/alarm-notify.sh test "ROLE"

Note that this will test all alert mechanisms for the selected role.


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