Viewers
From PortSensor Wiki
Viewers read sensor metrics from feeds provided by the Server.
Contents |
Desktop Viewer
The desktop viewer allows you to monitor sensor output and manage alerts for particular events. This can be installed on your team's workstations.
Installation
Windows
- Download the Windows Installer
- Run the PortSensorSetup.exe Installer
MacOSX
- Download the ZIP for MacOSX/Intel or MacOSX/PPC.
- Unzip the files into a directory
- Run the PortSensor executable
Linux
- Download the ZIP for Linux
- Unzip the files into a directory
- Run the PortSensor executable
Getting Started
The Desktop Viewer allows you to subscribe to, and receive notifications from, the feeds you set up on the PortSensor Server. To try it out we'll connect to a demo feed.
Subscribe to a Feed
You can add a feed by clicking on the "Subscribe" button on the toolbar. We can call this feed "Demo Feed" in the Subscription Name field. The "Subscription" URL is http://demo.portsensor.com/feed/demo_feed . The "Check every" field is where we decide how often we want the client to check the PortSensor Server for sensor updates. We'll enter "1" to check for updates every minute. The PortSensor Server allows you to password protect any feeds you create, but this demo feed is public, so leave the password field blank.
Click "OK".
You should see the sensors from the feed displayed in the main view. If a sensor is OK it is green. If it is registering a warning, it is yellow. If the sensor is down or critical, it is red.
Notifications
We want to make sure that we are notified about any critical sensors, so let's adjust the notification preferences. In the menu bar, go to File > Preferences. In the tree on the left, find the "Play a Sound" preference page nested inside the "Default Notifications" section. From this page you can choose to enable or disable the sound notification, as well as change the sound file that is played. For now, we'll just leave this page alone.
Now click on the "Send Mail" preference section. Here you can fill out your mail server settings if you want to be able to receive email notifications.
Default Notifications
When any sensor is critical, an alarm sound will play, and a dialog will display. If you do not close the dialog, and it stays open for 5 minutes, an email notification will be sent using the mail settings you set in the preferences section.
Custom Notifications
One of the more powerful features of the PortSensor client is the ability to override the default behavior of notifications for any sensors. Right click on the "Load" sensor and choose "Modify" from the context menu.
Click on the "Notifications" tab on the dialog, and click on the "Customize Rules" radio button. The area underneath is where we can create rules and custom notifications. There are 3 starting points for rules displayed in this section, which allows you to create rules that are only evaluated when a sensor is a specific status.
Let's create a rule for OK sensors first. Right click on the "OK" item and choose "Add Notification Rule".
Then fill out the fields so it looks like the example below:
In this example we are comparing the sensor output to a number, but you could also create a rule that is based on the amount by which the output changed (or change %) since the last it was checked.
The last option in the rule dialog is where you specify whether sensors that pass this rule should use the default notification technique described earlier, or whether you will be setting your own custom notification actions. If we check the radio button for "Use default notifications", when triggered, PortSensor will play a sound and show the error dialog only if our rule changed the sensor's status to CRITICAL. In our example we are choosing to add the custom notification actions manually. Hit the OK button on the rule dialog if you have not done so already.
If you expand the OK node in the notifications tab you will see the rule you just created like this:
Right click on the High Load rule and choose the "Add Notification Action" option.
We want to add a custom sound notification so pick the "Sound Notification" option from the dropdown menu. Pick a sound (.wav) file, the number of times you want it to play, and hit "OK".
Now your newly created notification action is displayed within the High Load rule. Go ahead and press the OK button on the Modify Sensor dialog.
