NAME

       tasks.cfg - Task definitions for the xymonlaunch utility

SYNOPSIS

       ~xymon/server/etc/tasks.cfg

DESCRIPTION

       The  tasks.cfg  file  holds  the list of tasks that xymonlaunch runs to perform all of the
       tasks needed by the Xymon monitor.

FILE FORMAT

       A task is defined by a key, a command, and  optionally  also  interval,  environment,  and
       logfile.

       Blank  lines  and lines starting with a hash mark (#) are treated as comments and ignored.
       Long lines can be broken up by putting a backslash at the end of the line  and  continuing
       the entry on the next line.

       An entry looks like this:

           [xymond]
                 ENVFILE /usr/local/xymon/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg
                 CMD /usr/local/xymon/server/bin/xymond

           [updateweb]
                 ENVFILE /usr/local/xymon/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg
                 CMD /usr/local/xymon/server/bin/xymongen
                 NEEDS xymond
                 GROUP webupdates
                 INTERVAL 5m
                 ONHOST localhost
                 MAXTIME 10m
                 LOGFILE /var/log/xymon/updateweb.log

           [monthlyreport]
                 ENVFILE /usr/local/xymon/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg
                 CMD /usr/local/xymon/server/ext/monthlyreport.sh
                 CRONDATE 30 4 1 * *

       The  key  is  enclosed in angle brackets, and must be unique for each task. You can choose
       your key-names as you like, they are only used internally in xymonlaunch to identify  each
       task.

       The  command is defined by the CMD keyword. This is the full command including any options
       you want to use for this task. This is required for all tasks.

       The DISABLED keyword means that this command is disabled.  xymonlaunch will not start this
       task.  It  is recommended that you use this to disable standard tasks, instead of removing
       them or commenting them out. Upgrades to Xymon will add standard tasks back into the file,
       so  unless you have them listed as DISABLED then tasks may re-appear unexpectedly after an
       upgrade. There is also a corresponding ENABLED keyword, to explicitly enable a task.

       The ONHOST keyword tells xymonlaunch that this task should only  run  on  specific  hosts.
       After  the  ONHOST keyword, you must provide a "regular expression"; if the hostname where
       xymonlaunch runs matches this expression, then the task will run.  If  it  doesn't  match,
       then the task is treated as if it were DISABLED.

       The  MAXTIME  keyword  sets a maximum time that the task may run; if exceeded, xymonlaunch
       will kill the task. The time is in seconds by default, you can specify minutes,  hours  or
       days  by adding an "m", "h" or "d" after the number. By default there is no upper limit on
       how long a taskmay run.

       The NEEDS instructs xymonlaunch not to run this task unless the task defined by the  NEEDS
       keyword is already running. This is used e.g. to delay the start of some application until
       the needed daemons have been started. The task that must be running is defined by its key.

       The GROUP keyword can be used to limit the number of tasks that  may  run  simultaneously.
       E.g.  if  you  are generating multiple pagesets of webpages, you don't want them to run at
       the same time.  Putting them into a GROUP will cause xymonlaunch to delay the start of new
       tasks,  so that only one task will run per group. You can change the limit by defining the
       group before the tasks, with a "GROUP groupname maxtasks" line.

       The INTERVAL keyword defines how often this command  is  executed.  The  example  shows  a
       command  that  runs every 5 minutes.  If no interval is given, the task is only run once -
       this is useful for tasks that run continually as daemons - although if the task stops  for
       some  reason,  then  xymonlaunch will attempt to restart it. Intervals can be specified in
       seconds (if you just put a number there), or in minutes (5m), hours (2h), or days (1d).

       The CRONDATE keyword is used for tasks that must run at regular intervals or at a specific
       time.  The  time specification is identical to the one used by cron in crontab(5) entries,
       i.e. a sequence of numbers for minute, hour, day-of-month, month and  day-of-week.  Three-
       letter  abbreviations  in  english  can  be  used for the month and day-of-week fields. An
       asterisk is a wildcard. So in the example above, this job would run once a month, at  4:30
       AM on the 1st day of the month.

       The  ENVFILE  setting  points  to a file with definitions of environment variables. Before
       running the task, xymonlaunch will setup all of the environment variables listed  in  this
       file.   Since this is a per-task setting, you can use the same xymonlaunch instance to run
       e.g. both the server- and client-side Xymon tasks. If this option is not present, then the
       environment defined to xymonlaunch is used.

       The  ENVAREA  setting  modifies  which environment variables are loaded, by picking up the
       ones that are defined for this specific "area".  See  xymonserver.cfg(5)  for  information
       about environment areas.

       The  LOGFILE setting defines a logfile for the task.  xymonlaunch will start the task with
       stdout and stderr redirected to this file. If this option is not present, then the  output
       goes to the same location as the xymonlaunch output.

SEE ALSO

       xymonlaunch(8), xymond(8), crontab(5), xymon(7)