4.3.2 Event To Mail Notification

The event to mail notification add-on sends event messages as e-mail notifications to one or more recipients.

To use this feature, the M&C server must be able to reach an SMTP mail server in the network. This may be a private mail server in the company LAN or a public mail server. For the latter case, the M&C server requires internet access.

Configuring / installing this feature is a four step procedure:

1. Create a "rules" file. See page Event Notification Add-Ons for details about this file.
2. Edit the "e2m.properties" file for your needs, some information about the settings in this file are given below.
3. Edit the "vlc.properties" file and set "server.addon=EventToMail" This line probably is already presented in the file but deactivated by a '#' character in front of it.
4. restart the M&C server

The "e2m.properties" file contains the parameters which configure the behavior of the event to mail notification. The file follows the Java properties file syntax and may contain thefollowing keys / values:

hostName specifies the hostname or IP address of the machine which runs the M&C server. In most cases you will leave this at 'localhost'.

ruleFileName specifies the name of the rule file used by the notification add-on. By default this is 'rules', you may change this if you like to keep multiple rules files which you want to use alternatively.

originate specifies the name or some identification of the M&C system. The text given here will be referenced as the message source in the text body.

minSendInterval specifies the minimal time (minutes) between two messages sent by the notification add-on. For instance, setting this to '60' will configure the software to send mails not more often than once an hour. Events happening in this time will be accumulated and included to the next mail as a list.

summary specifies the position of the message summary in the mail body. It may be one of 'none', 'top' or 'bottom'. If no summary is defined, 'top' is assumed as the default.

smtpHost specifies the name or IP address of the SMTP server which shall be used to send the mails.

smtpPort specifies the port number of the SMTP server which shall be used to send the mails. If not specified, the program assumes port 25 (SMTP).

smtpUser specifies the username to login at the SMTP server. if left empty or commented out, the software uses no SMTP authentication.

smtpPassword specifies the password to login at the SMTP server.

smtpSSL may be one of yes/no. Specifies if SMTPS (SMTP via SSL/TLS) shall be used as message transport. If not specified, the program uses no encryption.

smtpFrom specifies the from address to be set in the messages sent. Please note, the many public SNMP servers require this address to be a valid address because of their spam protection policy.

smtpTo specifies the list of recipients for the mail. Multiple e-mail addresses may be separated by comma characters, they all have to appear in the same line as the 'snmpTo' key.

verbose is for software tests only. For normal operation this always must be 'false'.

The file is read once at system start, hence any changes to this file become effective with the next restart of the M&C server.