On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Gordon Messmer <yiny...@eburg.com> wrote: > On 12/15/2009 11:03 PM, Martin Melin wrote: >> I don't understand why this is confusing. >> > ... >> By setting "notification_period null" in your service definition, you >> are explicitly overriding all forms of inheritance and setting the >> notification_period to null, which happens to be a special >> notification_period. >> > > Is that so? What does the special value do? In all of the > documentation, I only see "null" mentioned once. In a section labeled > "Cancelling Inheritance of String Values". The documentation indicates > that "null" can be used to prevent inheriting a value. Neither of those > things say to me, the user, that "null" is a special notification period. > >> So, the issue you are running into is due to you expecting implied >> inheritance to take precedence over values defined in the service >> definition itself. > > Only where the value is "null", which is documented only to prevent the > inheritance of a value. > >> This would break the documented and expected >> behavior of inheritance, and a lot of people's configurations. >> > > I'm sure that when you tell me what the "null" notification period does, > I'll understand how. For now, I don't, because it doesn't seem to be > documented.
null is a value for a notification period that does not have any effect. Most config's I've seen have a timeperiod named "none", configured to never match. This accomplishes the same thing. Using null does not do anything special as far as inheritance is concerned - you could define a timeperiod call "foobar" that never matches, and use that instead of null. The problem is that both you and I got the impression that 'null' might instead reset a variable so that it behaves the same as being undefined, i.e. would not propagate to an implementing definition from a template. > >> Something that might work, but unfortunately I can't try it as I've >> already spent too much time on this email :-), is to set >> notification_period to null in the template, which could mean that the >> service definition will behave as though the notification_period value >> is unset in the template. This would allow you to let the "null >> notification period" template inherit from your normal template. >> > > I'm not sure if you read my original email, but that's EXACTLY what I > did. Tell me again how you don't understand why this is confusing. Interesting. I thought that you were setting the notification_period in the service definition, but I see now that it is in the service template. My mistake. > > Snark aside, I appreciate the help and discussion. However, looking at > the documentation again only convinces me more that the documentation > and the code don't match up. Your confusion, too, lends credence to my > position, IMO. I agree that the documentation can be clarified to explain that the value 'null' does not, as one might think, reset a variable to undefined. Best regards, Martin Melin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Verizon Developer Community Take advantage of Verizon's best-in-class app development support A streamlined, 14 day to market process makes app distribution fast and easy Join now and get one step closer to millions of Verizon customers http://p.sf.net/sfu/verizon-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
