This plug-in is deprecated and is no longer supported by Geneos.
We recommend that you not use any deprecated features, as these may be removed in future releases.

For more information, see Deprecated and removed features in Geneos Compatibility Matrix.

Gissing Plug-in - Technical Reference

Introduction

The Geneos Gissing ConteX Plug-in monitors the Gissing ConteX system by reading the status information file written by the Gissing ConteX Status Output Feed (STATHand).

Views

The Gissing ConteX PlugIn does not produce a fixed set of views, but dynamically displays views depending on the information it finds in the Gissing status information file at runtime.

The following section briefly describes the views that will generally be available. This is based on the information about the status file that is available at the time of wring this document. For the most up to date description of the status information that will be given out by STATHand, please read the latest version of Gissing ConteX Status Output Feed.pdf.

CONTEX HANDLER View

This view shows basic handler status for each handler.

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CONTEX INFO View

This view shows the overall information of the Gissing modules, typically including Context and STATHand versions, fault tolerance status & last ping.

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HANDLER-STATUS-PAGE View Type

Shows each handler status page in a separate view. The contents of the Handler Status Pages are usually free text. If this free text is in a format that is known to the Plug-in, the Plug-In will extract and show the handler status information in a more meaningful manner. Otherwise, the text will be shown 'as is'.

The name of each view will begin with "CONTEX STATUS", followed by the name of the page.

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CONTEX LOG View

Show the most recent log events. The compressLogEvents sampler parameter can be used to combine similar logs in order to reduce the data shown in this view.

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Plug-in Configuration

Sample configuration (Mandatory):

tatusFile: \files\StatusDump.txt

										SampleConfiguration (Optional):

										excludeRecordSubstrings
										excludeRecordSubstring: %CHAIN
										excludeRecordSubstring: %RICSTATUS
										dcsoHandlerNames
										dcsoHandlerName: DCSO_DDS
										mkloHandlerNames
										mkloHandlerName: MKLO1
										mkloHandlerName: MKLO2
										tlkoHandlerNames
										tlkoHandlerName: TLKO1
										tlkoHandlerName: TLKO2
										combinableHandlerTypes
										combinableHandlerType: Triarch SSL Input Handler
										compressLogPrefixes
										compressLogPrefix: Failed to open item 0#FA
										compressLogPrefix: Failed to open item 0#FLEET
										compressLogPrefix: Failed to open item
										compressLogPrefix: Failed to retrieve chain link

The following parameters can be configured for this plug-in:

statusFile

The full path of the status information file (including file name)

Mandatory: Yes

fileTrigger

The full path of the status information file (including file name) - This is generic variable that is used to trigger re-sampling when the given file is changed.

Mandatory: No

excludeRecordSubstrings

Used to exclude records in the status information file from being displayed.

If any of the words in this list appears as a part of a record heading, then that record is ignored.

Mandatory: No

Default: %CHAIN, %RICSTATUS

dcsoHandlerNames

Comma-separated list of handler names of the handler class 'DCSO'. The handler names are configured by the ConteX user.

This is needed so that the plug-in can identify the handler status pages from the DCSO-class handler (s).

Mandatory: No

Default: DCSO

mkloHandlerNames

Comma-separated list of handler names of the handler class 'MKLO'. The handler names are configured by the ConteX user.

This is needed so that the plug-in can identify the handler status pages from the MKLO-class handler (s).

Mandatory: No

Default: MKLO

tlkoHandlerNames

Comma-separated list of handler names of the handler class 'TLKO'. The handler names are configured by the ConteX user.

This is needed so that the plug-in can identify the handler status pages from the TLKO -class handler (s).

Mandatory: No

Default: TLKO

btsgHandlerNames

Comma-separated list of handler names of the handler class 'BTSG'. The handler names are configured by the ConteX user.

This is needed so that the plug-in can identify the handler status pages from the BTSG -class handler (s).

Mandatory: No

Default: BTSG

combinableHandlerTypes

Comma-seperated list of handler status page (HSP) types, where for each type, multiple handler status pages will be combined into single views.

The handler type, in this situation, is the full title that comes bounded by * characters in the HSP's in the status output file.

E.g. if this list contains "A" and "B" then all HSP's that have "* A *" as the title will be combined into one view, and the same will happen for all HSP's that have "* B *" as the title.

Mandatory: No

compressLogPrefixes

Number of prefixes to use to identify similar log events (Relates to the CONTEX LOG View)

This feature is used to combine sets of similar log events in to one row. For example if the text "Error connecting to server" was configured as such a prefix, all log events that start with this text will be represented as a single row saying "Error connecting to server...<n> events (s)" where n is the number of such events encountered.

Mandatory: No