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Absolute Path to the application issue in OMSA 5.5
Hello all
I am trying to get the alert actions to work on the Dell OMSA 5.5 platform. I have a vbs script called mail.vbs that lives at the root of the C drive for the windows 2008 server I am trying to manage. I go to the alert actions page and I put in the execute application area right next to Absolute path to the application c:\mail.vbs. I know the script works because I can just double click it and it immediatley sends me an email to my inbox saying "hardware failure, please investigate." that's all I want it to do. Just run that vbs script when you get an error. i put that in every system and storage event. A couple of days later, I find out that a DIMM in the server went bad, and I didn't get the alert. It looks like the OMSA failed to fire off that script.
My question is, did I not put in the "absolute" path? My guess is, it wanted me to put C:\mail.vbs, where I had to have a capital C instead of a lower case c. I think it's absurd, but I am hoping it is as simple as that. it would be nice to have a testing feature within Dell OMSA so you can simulate an error and see if it works or not.
Any information on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Lark2056
DELL-Jeff M
2 Intern
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793 Posts
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April 28th, 2009 17:00
Thanks for posting! Are you trying to start your script from OMSA, or IT Assistant? ITA can send alert emails with much more detail, and it is fairly simple to set up. Take a look at the four videos on http://support.dell.com/enterprise_videos starting with the one about installing IT Assistant. Once that is set up, ITA will send you emails for whatever Dell server with OMSA sends it an SNMP trap.
lark2056
5 Posts
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April 29th, 2009 08:00
Thanks for the reply
I am trying to confiugre it from the OMSA. I will try the IT assistant, but this looks so EASY from the OMSA. You just put in the path, an error happens, it executes the application (my C:\mail.vbs script) and I get an alert. Bingo!! Simple, right? I just need to know why it didn't fire off, like I put in c:\mail.vbs instead of C:\mail.vbs. Maybe the program got mad becasue I didn't use a capital C. As if it wasn't perfect or absolute. Your thougths?
Lark2056
DELL-Jeff M
2 Intern
2 Intern
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793 Posts
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May 3rd, 2009 17:00
The only other things I can think of off the top of my head is that the alert you are trying to trigger either takes more time than you're giving it to actually poll the hardware and trigger the alert, or it is expecting a .exe instead of a .vbs.
divot2001
52 Posts
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May 21st, 2009 23:00
There is a note in the Server Administrator User's Guide about how you have to execute a vbs file that seems to apply based on your description. It's a very quick fix if you're stuck with vbs although I prefer using batch files.
<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>
c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe /c d:\example\example1.vbs
instead of
d:\example\example1.vbs
You can have trouble when you try this from the root directory of C: instead of some other folder where the system account has read/execute permissions on the file. A lot of times that folder is read only and files inherit that permission. If you really want to handle alerts this way read on but I highly recommend using SNMP and IT Assistant for one very important reason. The single most common problem you can expect to see on a server and the most common reason configuring Alerts is to get an email when a hard drive is offline. However in Server Administrator you will not find an alert category for any type of storage event as that is handled separately by Storage Management Services. A lot of people misinterpret the Redundancy alerts to include storage but it's only for things connected to the motherboard and backplane like the memory and fans. Using SNMP means you only need to configure the SNMP service and install Server Administrator for any new server being deployed. And IT Assistant only needs to have the alerts configured once for any system it happens to be monitoring so no worries if a drive goes offline.
I've done what you're describing before and have gotten in the habit of storing any batch files in C:\Winnt or C:\Windows. One thing to keep in mind is vbs files can get blocked by all kinds of securirty tools so think about using the sendmail.vbs file included with IT Assistant (in the bin folder) with several batch files (alert1.bat, alert2.bat, ...) that send the appropriate email for an alert. That way you don't have to deal with any problems every single time you modify or add a new vbs file when you have a new employee.
Example for first alert - C:\WINNT\Alert1.bat
cd C:\Program Files\Dell\OpenManage\IT Assistant\bin
sendmail -t recipient1@company.com -f ita@company.com -s "Alert 1 example" -b "whatever you want here"
Make a bunch of copies of this batch file and rename them Alert2.bat and up with any changes needed in the email subject/body. Check out the link below for some more detailed information on troubleshooting SMTP.
Documentation on Sendmail script usage
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/configuring_email_actions_OMITA.doc
If you still are unable to receive the email alerts and you are seeing the warning in the ESM logs I would suggest forgetting about SMTP and verifying that your script is being triggered. Use a test batch file for something simple like Temperature warnings that you can trigger in Server Administrator (raise/lower the minimum warning threshold to set and clear the warning state). The batch file would only need to launch a system file (I prefer C:\WINNT\System32\Calc.exe) which you can check for through Task Manager. Presumably no one would be using calculator at the same time. Just make sure Server Administrator's Alert Action to Execute a File is a batch file that runs calc.exe since Server Administrator wouldn't run the executable directly.