We are checking Amazon S3 where we store some images, and occasionally the connection fails. We have found that it is usually a temporary problem and service is back almost instantly.

Unfortunately by then Simon has fired off our script and sent us an SMS.

So is there a way to tell Simon to ignore the first failure and check again a 2nd time maybe a few seconds later alerting us only if it fails twice in a row?

or any other suggestions to combat these 'sort of' false alarms?

I'm running Simon on a G4 Xserve (10.5.6) Around 22 tests are specified and none of them overlap & execute at the same time.

Seems like Simon won't get through even 8 hours without freezing up.

Nothing in the crash log to report. Where else can I check, or is there anything I can do within Simon's preferences to overcome this issue?

Hi there,

I am a newly registered user of Simon.

My main aim is to monitor website-servers (my own website-server as well as website-servers from clients) and email-servers.

I am currently getting acquainted to Simons versatile options one of which is getting notified by email in case of malfunctions of servers and changes to websites.

I set up a test to monitor the server of my websites domain using the following options:

Checking-Options:
- After success: 5 min.
- After failure: 3 min.
- Timeout: 3 min.

Service (see below):
- Web (HTTP)
- URL: http://www.myowndomain.de/ (just an example for this posting)
- Method: GET (which seems to get lost after OK-ing and re-opening the window)
(no further options)

Security:
left blank

Smart Change Detection:
left blank

Automatically Pause Test:
left blank

Notifiers (see below):
- Mistake: notify via email
- Failure: notify via email
- Recovery: notify via email

Reports:
- Include on these reports: set up a report on a specific folder on my HD.

______

Specific settings in Service:
Service Kind: basic
- Default protocol: http://
- Default URL: http://www.myowndomain.de/
- Pause: none

Specific settings in Email-Notifier:
Notifier Options:
- Checked: Change - after 1 consecutive changes
- Checked: Failure - after 1 consecutive failures
- Checked: Only notify once for each failure
- Checked: Recovery - after 1 recoveries
- Checked: Only notify if failure notified

Notifier Kind: E-Mail
- Message body with variables
- To, From, Reply to, Subject, Transport filled with working parameters (adopted from my Entourage accounts)
- Options: same (adopted from my Entourage accounts)

______

Since I cannot invoke the remote server to malfunction, I applied some changes to my website (text-changes within the body of index.html) in order to check wether my setup works and to receive a change-notification. So far I can't get Simon to send notifiers in case of changes to my website (and in case of server-malfunction?).

I then manually sent the email-notifier by clicking "Notify now" in the task bar of the Notifier Window while the specific notifier was highlighted in order to check wether that worked. I immediately received (and I mean it: immediately!) an email with the message subject and body that has been set up in the email-notifier. Even the "Reply-To" a different address worked like charm.

However the variables weren't inserted in the body and the subject. Instead the variable-placeholders remained within angled brackets. For example: {TestURL} delivered [URL] and {TestLastFailureTime} delivered [LastFailureTime] and {TestLastFailureDate} delivered [LastFailureDate]. Also language-specific characters weren't submitted apparently due to encoding-settings (e.g. german contains specific characters like ä).

1.) Are there any apparent mistakes I may have applied (or overseen s.th.) in my test-setup that causes Simon not to deliver an email-notification after I applied changes to my website?

2.) Any impact that the "GET" method gets lost (blank line) after confirming the test and re-opening it?

3.) What lead to not inserting the correct variables in the email subject and body (perhaps due to manual sending)?

4.) Are there any (preference-)settings that allow for a specific encoding of the mail subject and body?

Thanks.

Jo