Notification daemon: vovnotifyd

The vovnotifyd daemon is used to deliver notifications to selected recipients about functions that are related to job events.

On Accelerator, this delivery function is associated with the MAILTO property of the jobs. (This association does not apply to other Altair Accelerator products.)

The notifications are related to health checks, such as taskers that are down, jobs that are stuck or waiting too long, and so on. These conditions are detected by Accelerator or Monitor. Predefined system health check procedures are included with the Altair Accelerator.

The content and the email delivery of the notifications can be configured by using the forms and text fields on the browser, or by creating and editing files that use CLI commands.

The following table lists the files that are related to vovnotifyd.

Table 1. Summary of vovnotifyd Files
Config files	vnc.swd/vovnotifyd/config.tcl vnc.swd/vovnotifyd/config_smtp.tcl vnc.swd/vovnotifyd/config_export.tcl
Info file	vnc.swd/vovnotifyd/info.tcl
Auxiliary files	$VOVDIR/tcl/vtcl/vovhealthlib.tcl $VOVDIR/local/vovhealthlib.tcl vnc.swd/vovnotifyd/vovhealthlib.tcl

Timing of Notifications

You can use the TIMEVAR definitions to control the timing at which license expiration and other emails are sent.

In vovhealthlib.tcl, you can define a TIMEVAR such as:

source $env(VOVDIR)/tcl/vtcl/vovflexlmdlib.tcl
package require vovurlutils

global HEALTHLIB_PRODUCT_MAP HEALTH_PROCS env

set HEALTHLIB_PRODUCT_MAP(doTestHealthMyFeature) "nc"
# registerHealthCheck doTestHealthMyFeature -checkfreq 10 -forceCheckfreq -mailfreq 10 -forceMailfreq
lappend HEALTH_PROCS(list) doTestHealthMyFeature

proc doTestHealthMyFeature { args } {
    global HEALTH_PROCS
    set homeUrl $HEALTH_PROCS(homeURL)
    # VovMessage "now running doTestHealthMyFeature"
    set subject "TestMyHealthFeature"
    set body "\nHi,\n\nWe ran TestMyHealthFeature.\n"
    doMailNotify doTestHealthMyFeature "@ADMIN" $subject $body
}

TIMEVAR doTestHealthMyFeature {
    Tue {
        suppressMail doTestHealthMyFeature 1
    }
    06:00-08:00 {
        suppressMail ALL 0
        suppressMail doTestHealthMyFeature 0
    }
    default {
        suppressMail ALL 1
        suppressMail doTestHealthMyFeature 1
    }
}

Where calling suppressMail with a "1" for the specified health check will suppress the mailings for that TIMEVAR. suppressMail accepts either the name of a specific health check, or "ALL" to control all defined health check routines.

Configure vovnotifyd via the Browser

On the menu bar, click the Administrations icon (which looks like a gear).
This takes you to Admin page.
In the left column on the Admin page under Administration, select - Daemons.
In the Daemons page, select config for vovnotifyd.
The next windows provides the options to edit, enable and disable the desired features: Health Checks, SMTP Configuration or E-Mail Maps
After configurations have been set, the option to view the current configurations will be available in the Config File column: Show config file.
CAUTION:
Configurations can be modified in the this text field. To avoid errors, it is recommended to instead configure the parameters in the GUI fields that are described below.

Health Checks: By default, all procedures are monitored. Procedures that are designated as not required can be disabled.
SMTP Configuration: SMTP Configuration is used to configure the notification system.
Note: To query LDAP for email addresses, LDAP must first be configured. For details about LDAP configuration, refer to LDAP Integration.
E-Mail Maps: E-Mail Maps are used to add, update or remove the email addresses of the users that receive notifications. By default, email addresses are sent directly via either the user ID or user@sourcedomain. In addition, alternate email addresses can also be entered per recipient.

Configure vovnotifyd via the CLI

Note: For information about configuring health checks, refer to Health Monitoring and vovnotifyd.

To manually configure vovnotifyd, create the directory vovnotifyd inside the server working directory (.swd).
Copy the configuration file template into the newly-created directory.
```
cp $VOVDIR/etc/config/vovnotifyd/config.tcl
```

Modify the configuration template to match the settings of your mail server environment.

% cd `vovserverdir -p .`
% mkdir vovnotifyd

Example of the $VOVDIR/etc/config/vovnotifyd/config.tcl file:

# Notification configuration file.
# Should be placed in the vovnotifyd directory of the .swd.
# All settings are required unless specified otherwise.
# Unused optional settings should be commented out.

# Create an e-mail address map, stackable, optional
addUserToEmailAddressMap  rtdamgr john@mydomain.com

### AltairMonitor-specific settings
# See notification configuration documentation in Altair Monitor Admin guide
# ConfigureTag     TAG OPTION VALUE
# ConfigureFeature FEATURE OPTION VALUE

### Examples:
# ConfigureTag MGC -poc { john mary }
# ConfigureFeature EDA/MATLAB -longcheckout 2d -userlongcheckout john 1w -mincap 5 -triggerperc 90
# ConfigureFeature SIMULINK -poc bob -mincap 10 -triggeruse 12

To start the daemon, either enter the command nc cmd vovdaemonmgr start vovnotifyd, or start it manually from the vovnotifyd directory as shown below:
```
% vovproject enable vnc
% cd `vovserverdir -p vovnotifyd`
% vovnotifyd
```

Autostart vovnotifyd

In the directory vnc.swd/autostart set up your script start_vovnotifyd.tcl to run with autostart:

% cd `vovserverdir -p .`
% mkdir autostart
% cp $VOVDIR/etc/autostart/start_vovnotifyd.tcl autostart