[Pkg-monitoring-maintainers] Bug#877078: mon: everything breaks when an alert script doesn't return

[Russell Coker]

Package: mon
Version: 1.3.2-1
Severity: normal

When an alert script hangs (EG sendxmpp goes into an infinite loop and hangs
mailxmpp.alert) the main mon process stops normal operation and doesn't send
other alerts or even shutdown normally.

It should have some basic controls in place to minimise such problems (EG set
a limit of 1 minute of CPU time for sending an alert or running a monitor
script) and also keep operating normally if an alert script hangs.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages mon depends on:
ii  adduser              3.115
ii  init-system-helpers  1.48
ii  libc6                2.24-11+deb9u1
ii  libtime-period-perl  1.20-8.2
ii  mon-client           1.2.0-2

Versions of packages mon recommends:
ii  bc                               1.06.95-9+b3
pn  fping                            <none>
pn  libauthen-pam-perl               <none>
ii  libcgi-pm-perl                   4.35-1
pn  libcrypt-ssleay-perl             <none>
ii  libfilesys-df-perl               0.92-6+b1
ii  libmail-imapclient-perl          3.38-1
ii  libnet-dns-perl                  1.07-1
pn  libnet-ldap-perl                 <none>
pn  libnet-telnet-perl               <none>
ii  libproc-processtable-perl        0.53-2
pn  libsnmp-perl                     <none>
pn  libstatistics-descriptive-perl   <none>
pn  libtime-parsedate-perl           <none>
ii  perl-modules-5.24 [libnet-perl]  5.24.1-3+deb9u2
ii  swaks                            20170101.0-1

Versions of packages mon suggests:
ii  mon-contrib  1.0+dfsg-4

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/mon/mon.cf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information