You can have the error emails sent to a Gmail or Yahoo mail account, if you don't mind the security implications of doing that.
Using an external monitoring probe could help address the issue of the database not being accessible, and can address the problem of other major errors that might have even knocked out your mail server. WhatsUp Gold is commercial software, but you can get by with simple programming. Just set up a page in your site that performs a database query and does some other essential checks. At the end of the page, output a string such as "successful." Have a scheduled task on some external server that hits that monitoring page every five minutes and looks for the word "successful." If it does not find the word, send out an E-mail. You get at most one email every five minutes. I have done this and it works well. I usually have two pages, one .cfm and one .htm. If the cfm page fails, I then check the .htm page for the same key word to see if the Web server is responsive. If you look around, you can probably find inexpensive site monitoring programs or services that perform a similar function. WhatsUp Gold is expensive, but you can configure it to perform actions when it detects that something is wrong, such as rebooting the ColdFusion service. Good luck, Mike Chabot On 7/17/06, Scott Newsome <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Terrence, > > You are absolutely correct! This is just a stop gap measure till the larger > problems with infrastructure, network or exchange can be addressed. > Unfortunately, the newspaper I work for is very cash strapped and slow to a > address these issues. > > I have reservations about using the server scope but am considering using it > by creating a structure to hold approx. the last 20 errors. Getting the > average time between errors and when that exceeds a certain treshhold, > triggering the trottle. > > I'd like to know if anyone has done something similar or if in one of the > CFserver monitoring packages like Fusion Reactor have this kind of feature. > > Scott > > > >You could add code to all of your error trapping that specifically traps > >database errors. Then in the handling for that check for the existence > >of a application or server scope (depending on how many applications you > >have on the server) variable like say "server.dberrorReported." If it > >does not exist or is false, send the email and set > >"server.dberrorReported" to true. If "server.dberrorReported" is true, > >than just log the error. You would then have to remember to reset the > >variable to false when the problem is over. > > > >There are caveats to using the server scope. Which I'm sure people will > >chime in about. > > > >I would also recommend trying to go after the underlying issue. If > >losing your database server and generating enough errors to clogs your > >mailserver, is happening frequently enough to cause you to try and > >change your error handling techniques, you may need to re-evaluate your > >configuration, hardware or networking. > > > >Terrence Ryan > >Senior Systems Programmer > >Wharton Computing and Information Technology > > > >E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Introducing the Fusion Authority Quarterly Update. 80 pages of hard-hitting, up-to-date ColdFusion information by your peers, delivered to your door four times a year. http://www.fusionauthority.com/quarterly Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/message.cfm/forumid:4/messageid:246822 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.4
