Feature request: add notification_interval to contact(group)s OR keep sending normal notifications together with escalations

[vladki77]

Hello,

I think it would be useful to be able to specifiy notification_interval for contatcs separately. Some contacts may be ok for being alerted frequently if something is wrong, but some may need only 1 or much less frequent notifications.

I tried to achieve this with escalations, but the problem is that when escalation happens, the usual notification is suppressed, which was not convenient either. So an alternative would be an option for escalations to not suppress the normal notification.

Best regards
Vladislav Kurz

[everwatch]

That doesn't make sense given how Nagios works. The host/service creates an alert which triggers a notification. It is the notification that has a notification_interval, not the source (host/service) or the target (the contact). The contact does have a notification_period that can be used to determine when they get notified, but not a notification_interval because that would require a multi-threaded notification management system to keep track of individual notifications for individual contacts to make sure everyone gets notified at their custom interval.

That won't be easy to program, will create lots of extra work for the Nagios scheduler, and is not in line with the methodology of how Nagios works today. See https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagioscore/docs/nagioscore/4/en/objectdefinitions.html#contact for more information on configuring the notification_period if this helps you.

As for original notifications being suppressed during escalations, the documentation for escalation (https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagioscore/docs/nagioscore/4/en/escalations.html) clearly states:

it is important to keep in mind that any contact groups that were members of "lower" escalations (i.e. those with lower notification number ranges) should also be included in "higher" escalation definitions. This should be done to ensure that anyone who gets notified of a problem continues to get notified as the problem is escalated.

So you should be doing that as your general approach, as directed.

[vladki77]

OK, I agree that matching notification_interval for every contact would be difficult.

Regarding escalations - the current logic prevents me to have one "higher" level escalation contact(group) if the "lower" level escalations differ for various services/hosts. I'd have to create multiple escalations that match the lower levels.

E.g.: I have 2 hostgroups, with normal notifications going to contactgroups A+B and A+C respectively. I want escalations to go to contactgroup D in addition to A+B/C. I do not want B or C getting nottifications (event escalated) for hosts that are not their business. Now I have to define two escalactions: A+B+D and A+C+D. If escalations would (optionally) not suppress lower level notifications, I'd need only one escalation for D.

Is at least that feasible?

[everwatch]

I agree that optionally having normal notifications continue while escalations are configured would be a good addition.