[Nut-upsdev] Usage of 'alarm_(init|set|commit)'

[Arnaud Quette]

Hi Arjen,

2007/8/10, Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at de-korte.org>:
> Replying to myself... :-)
>
> > I think the alarm_* functions are an excellent way to convey informative
> > messages about UPS status/problems to an operator (a human, if we
> > disregard the trained monkeys some people may use). Therefor, I want to
> > propose that we use a free format here and not a list of predefined status
> > words for the following reasons:
> >
> > 1) Situations that need to be dealt with immediately (in a matter of
> > seconds) are dealt with through 'ups.status'. This requires automatic
> > parsing and therefor we are restricted here to a fixed set of status
> > words.
> >
> > 2) Alarms typically can't be solved without intervention of an operator
> > and don't require *immediate* action. This means they don't need to be
> > parsed automatically, hence we're not restricted by a fixed set of status
> > words.
> >
> > 3) We don't want to loose information by grouping similar, but not
> > entirely identical situations under one alarm report. Instead, we want to
> > be as precise as possible, in order to help the operator resolve the
> > problem.
>
> The above also formalises the existing implementation in the 'bcmxcp' and
> 'gamatronic' drivers. As can be seen there, both have a wide variety of
> alarms, which supports the idea that we should keep this a free format
> (there probably aren't that many common alarms between drivers anyway).
>
> Again, any thoughts?

as always, I'm all for standardizing, and I'm sure that something can
be done for the alarm names (at least, a first pass of naming
consolidation should be done).

This would at least allow:
- to avoid alarm duplication,
- to help developers implementing alarm support,
- to have something like the cmdvartab (friendly alarm names) that can
be used to display something less cryptic than the raw alarm name.

Arnaud
-- 
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