Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] · Tue, 28 Aug 2001 10:49:55 +0200

  > It appears that the cut-off in the addressing is not in the mail 
  > forwarding but in the alarm handler reading its configuration file.
  > What is the limit on the line length in alarm handler config files?

Oops,

the config file line length is limited by a buffer which is of length
MAX_STRING_LENGTH, i.e. 500 (defined in alh.h).

It never appeared to me that this might be too short, but it obviously
is.

If I understand correctly, the ... exceptional length of your config
file lines is due to listing multiple mail addresses. Even without
having detailed knowledge about your mail forwarding scheme ... I would
always try to have alh call a (shell or perl) script instead of
populating the alh config file with email addresses. This not only keeps
config file lines short, it also nicely separates things: you don't have
to restart the alh (with all the additional log entries and stuff) just
because you changed the mail address lists. Also, a script could do
additional checking, e.g. don't send mails if a file called _SHUTDOWN_
exists - we use such a mechanism to keep things quiet in shutdown
periods with zillions of bogus alarms.

Cheers,
Ralph

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System