[noctool-devel] Monitor-configuration question

[Ingvar]

So, there's this sexp-based configuration language. And I was wondering, if we 
have a monitor that has lots of assorted defaults, but it's good to have those 
tunable, should we use keyword-like syntax?

At the moment, I think the following would be good for tuning ping monitoring:

(machine "blah" :linux-host
  (ping :max-rtt 500 :max-fail 17 :ping-count 42 :interval 3600))

That instantiates a ping monitor that should re-schedule every hour, do 42 
pings, consider 17 failed to be enough for a red alert and has an RTT 
threshold of 500 ms. Defaults, at the moment, are "1 failed", "20 ms RTT", 
"60s interval" and "5 pings".

Disk monitors, however, use a blend of required and optional arguments, but it 
makes sense there, because without specifying anything at all, there will be a 
set of default disk monitors and the main reason you'd want to configure 
anything is to change the "percentage used space" threshold.

But, then, this makes the configuration language somewhat irregular. Though I 
personally prefer "makes sense" config language to "super-regular".

Thoughts, anyone? We're not at a point where we have to commit 100% to the 
config language, but it'd be good to have something more-or-less nailed down 
the day we build the first release.

//Ingvar