cluther: Thanks for that information! That is a fantastic way of doing things, 
so simple... Not much of a surprise for ZenOSS, I guess. I'll give that a shot 
soon.

In the mean time, I figured out a little hack that serves as a watchdog timer. 
I created a small python script on the Automate box that opens a TCP port for 
five minutes, then closes it. This task runs in Automate once every five 
minutes, and ZenOSS can monitor that port as a service, and alert if it is ever 
down. 

... I'm excited to rip it out and use the built-in heartbeat mechanism though. 

Ewall: Regarding Automate6 and the specific problems I'm experiencing... Event 
log monitoring is a great idea, and I'd agree that with Automate you can 
usually beef up tasks to be more robust against failure. 

However, our problem is frustrating because it's impossible to reproduce, 
sporadic, and entirely stops task execution and logging. Automate6's terminal 
emulation has ... issues. SSH access is amazingly slow, and the bug we're 
experiencing (terminal sessions tasks stop responding, despite the TCP 
connection staying up, freezing ALL task execution, never timing out) has been 
impossible to troubleshoot. 

To me, it feels like Network Automation purchased an old moldy terminal 
emulation DLL from a third-party, and really can't improve it. The SSH speed 
bug has been pushed back from being fixed in Automate7 to being targeted for 
Automate8. The Automate forums are full of similar complaints about sftp 
performance, dating back to Automate5(!).

The terminal emulation feature is so fragile, that you can yank the network 
cord on the workstation, terminating the TCP connection, and the error isn't 
even propagated up to running task. 

... anyways: thank you all for your help, I'll try to get that heartbeat trick 
documented somewhere, it's so simple and non-obvious.




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