Monitoring and Alert Systems

Monitoring and Alert Systems

EPICS Alarm Handler

During production the EPICS alarm handler should always be running.

• See Hall C Alarm Handler and Hall C EPICS

Munin

MUNIN is an open source general purpose monitoring system used to track and monitor a large variety of systems across Hall C. This service is always running and is unrelated to the EPICS infrastructure (other than using EPICS PVs as a data source for some systems.)

Run "go_munin" on a Hall C computer to bring up the monitoring graphs, or connect to https://hallcweb.jlab.org/munin/ directly.

Monitored systems presently include:

• The majority of Hall C linux hosts
• Gas system flows, temperatures, pressures Gas Shed, Hall A GEM gas
• HVAC status in G0 cage (where HV crates and other critical systems reside, and
• DAQ crate power and temperature information

Deployment

• The primary MUNIN server runs on cvideo1.jlab.org, but MUNIN clients run on the majority of linux hosts in the Hall. MUNIN is a 'pluggable' system that can be broadly extended with scripts that deliver data to the software in a standardized format. See the documentation on MUNIN for details.
• The Hall C Puppet system automatically deploys the munin client on new hosts, but those hosts must be manually added to the server config under 'cvideo1:/etc/munin/conf.d/'

• Aspects of the configuration can be modified under /etc/munin/conf.d/ if you are in the (local) 'munin' unix group on cvideo1.

Alerts

Munin can be configured to send notifications via email and/or text-message if a monitored value exceeds threshold. Email notifications can occur every 5 minutes until the problem is addressed, so appropriate filtering/redirection in your mail client is recommended.

NOTE: This system is completely independent of the EPICS alarm handler(s) that make noise in the Counting House.

Notifications are sent to the HallC_Alarm_Notifications Mailing List. Subscribe if you wish to see them.

NOTE: This can be a very high-volume list when things go south in the Hall.

      It is strongly recommended to configure your mail reader/system to filter 
      messages from that list into a dedicated folder.

Notification Management

Just a few rough notes on how to enable/disable notifications. (Munin documentation have the full story, of course.)

Unless otherwise noted, all of the configuration scripts are located at cvideo1:/etc/munin/. Revisions are managed using git. The git log is a good 'how-to' and 'examples' resource.

Many of the conf files are editable by the cvideo1 user, but it is generally simplest/best to use sudo to make edits (and run the systemctl commands noted).

• Default trip thresholds are baked into the monitoring scripts under /etc/munin/plugins/ on the server (cvideo1) and the respective nodes.
  • Thresholds can (and should) be overridden using the files under cvideo1:/etc/munin/conf.d/. You will need to work out which node (host) is providing the underlying data and modify the corresponding file.
  • Run systemctl restart munin-node to ensure changes are picked up on the next run (systems are polled every 5 minuntes).

• Enable/disable email notifications from a node (host)
  • The default notification directive is defined by the contacts directive in cvideo1:/etc/munin/munin.conf. Change that line to contacts no to disable (default) notifications.
  • The contacts line can (and is) overridden on a host-by-host basis in the respective cvideo1:/etc/munin/conf.d/* files.
  • Note: most of the EPICS related monitoring is handled on the cvideo1 host (and are configured under /etc/munin/conf.d/cvideo1.conf
  • Run systemctl restart munin to ensure changes are picked up on the next run (systems are polled every 5 minuntes).

NOTE: Logging changes with git is strongly encouraged.