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Jeremy_Bridges_'s avatar
Jeremy_Bridges_
Icon for Nimbostratus rankNimbostratus
Sep 22, 2009

Custom SNMP Trap Delay

I have configured some custom SNMP traps in /config/user_alert.conf following this article:

http://devcentral.f5.com/Default.aspx?tabid=63&articleType=ArticleView&articleId=256

Here is the alert definition I have defined:

 
 alert BIGIP_CUSTOM_TEST "testing notification" { 
         snmptrap OID=".1.3.6.1.4.1.3375.1.1.110.200" 
 } 
 

The article is excellent. However, it seems there is an odd delay that shows up. If I trigger a trap using the logger command:

logger -p local0.warning "testing notification"

I will see a SNMP trap (using WireShark). However, if I immediately repeat the logger command, no trap is sent. After waiting some time (30-60 seconds), running the logger command again will trigger another trap.

Is this normal behavior? If so, why does it work this way?
  • hoolio's avatar
    hoolio
    Icon for Cirrostratus rankCirrostratus
    I think that's syslog-ng suppressing duplicate messages:

     

     

     

    http://devcentral.f5.com/wiki/default.aspx/iRules/log

     

     

    Note There is a significant behavioral difference when the optional . is specified. When iRule logs messages without the facility and/or level, they are rate-limited as a class and subsequently logged messages within the rate-limit period may be suppressed even though they are textually different. However, when the and/or are specified, the log messages are not rate-limited (though syslog-ng will still perform suppression of repeated duplicates).

     

     

     

     

    Aaron
  • That makes sense. Fortunately, this kind of supression should be ok. We want to know when a pool member is marked down, but we don't care if it supresses messages about the same pool member being marked down several times in a short time period. Thanks for the info.