Events and alerts

The events module is a convenient service that allows you to receive notifications of certain events and alerts that happen in your eBox machine.

eBox allows you to receive these alerts and events through the following dispatchers:

• Mail [1]
• Jabber
• Logs
• RSS

[1]	The mail module needs to be installed and configured. (Electronic Mail Service (SMTP/POP3-IMAP4)).

Before enabling any event watcher you have to make sure that the events module is enabled. Go to Module status and check the events module.

Unlike in the Logs module, where all services are enabled by default except the firewall, you have to enable those events that might be of your interest.

To enable any events, you have to click on the menu entry Events ‣ Configure Events. You can edit an event state by clicking on the pencil icon. Tick the Enabled box and click on the Change button.

Configure events page

There are some events that need further configuration to work properly. This is the case for the log and free storage space observers.

The configuration of the free storage observer is pretty straightforward. The only required parameter is the free space percentage that will trigger the event when its actual value goes under it.

For the log observer, the first step is to select which domains you want to generate events from. For every domain, you can add filtering rules that depend on the domain. Some examples are: denied HTTP requests by the proxy, DHCP leases for a giving IP, canceled printer jobs, and so on. You can also create an event filter from an existing log query by clicking on the Save as an event button through Logs ‣ Query Logs ‣ Full Report.

Configure Log Observer page

So far, you know how to enable the generation of events and alerts. However, you also need these events and alerts to be sent to you in order to be read. That is what event dispatchers are for. Go to the Configure dispatchers tab.

Configure dispatchers page

The procedure to enable event dispatchers is similar to enabling event watchers. You have to configure all the watchers except the log watcher. The latter will write its output to /var/log/ebox/ebox.log. The other dispatchers require further configuration.

Mail:

You have to set the email address of the recipient (usually the eBox administrator). You can also set the subject of the messages.

Jabber:

You have to set the Jabber server address and port that will be used to send the messages. You also have to set the username and password of the user that will send the messages. Finally, you have to set the Jabber address of the recipient.

RSS:

You have to decide who will be able to read the RSS feed, and the feed link itself. You can make the channel public, private, or authorized by a source IP address-based policy. Note that you can also use objects instead of IP addresses.

Practical Example

Configure the events module to make it show the message “eBox is up and running in /var/log/ebox/ebox.log. This message will be generated periodically, and every time the events module is restarted.

1. Action: Access the eBox web interface, go to Module Status and enable events.

   Effect:

   The Save Changes button has turned red.

2. Action: Go to Events and click on the tab labeled Configure Events. Click on the pencil icon that is placed in the Status column. Check the Enabled field and click on:Change.

   Effect:

   The events table shows the event as enabled.

3. Action: Go to the tab labeled Configure dispatchers. Click on the pencil icon of the row that contains the Log event. Enable it and click on Change.

   Effect:

   The event disptacher table shows the log dispatcher as enabled.

4. Action: Save changes.

   Effect:

   eBox shows the progress of the saving changes process until it displays a message to let you know it is done.

   An event with the message ‘eBox is up and running’ will be written in /var/log/ebox/ebox.log.

5. Action: From the console on the eBox machine run: sudo /etc/init.d/ebox events restart.

   Effect:

   An event with the message ‘eBox is up and running’ will be written again in /var/log/ebox/ebox.log.