[Orca-users] Re: Nightly "did exist and is now gone" emailmessages

[Blair Zajac]

Douglas Valkenaar wrote:
> 
> At 10:51 AM 11/8/01, you wrote:
> >Douglas Valkenaar wrote:
> > >
> > > Every night after setting up Orca and the orcallator I'm receiving
> > messages
> > > such as:
> > >
> > > Orca: file `/proj/atria/etc/orcallator/trout/orcallator-2001-11-06-000'
> > did
> > > exist and is now gone.
> > >
> > > I get two of them and then they stop until the next night.  Does anyone
> > > know the cause of this?
> > >
> > > Thanks in advance.
> >
> >Douglas,
> >
> >I just added this question to the FAQ at
> >
> >         http://www.orcaware.com/orca/docs/FAQ.txt
> >
> >   2.4) Warning: file `.../orcallator/host1/orcallator-2001-11-06-000'
> >        did exist and is now gone.
> >
> >        Orca prints this message when it found an input data file to
> >        read and when it goes to read it, which may be a while later,
> >        the file no longer exists.
> >
> >        When Orca is being used with orcallator.se, this message may
> >        occur when orcallator.se compresses the previous day's percol-*
> >        or orcallator-* file that Orca found.
> >
> >Are you compressing or removing the percol-* or orcallator-* data files at
> >some point in the day?
> 
> They are being compressed by 'orcallator.se' - probably about that
> time.  Do you think there's some way to tweak the timing of events to avoid
> this happening?  While it's simply an annoyance, I'd really rather only get
> real failure messages.
> 
> Thanks for the response!

I don't know why you're seeing them.  Orca has code to check if the file was
up to date and then is not up to date to warn the administrator but not if
the day of the month has changed, for example when orcallator.se is not
using compression is, used and then it starts writing to a new file at the
end of the day.

However, this isn't true for the warning you're seeing.

Can you look exactly when you're getting the messages and when orcallator.se
is compressing the files?  This would help.

If you want to get rid of the warning, you can comment out the email_message
line at

  if ($file_status == -1) {
    my $message = "file `$sfile_fids[$fid]' did exist and is now gone.";
    email_message($config_global{warn_email}, $message);
    warn "$0: warning: $message\n";
    unless ($fd) {
      $self->[I_LAST_READ_TIME] = -1;
      return 0;
    }
  }

in SourceFile.pm.

Best,
Blair

-- 
Blair Zajac <blair at orcaware.com> - Perl & sysadmin services for hire
Web and OS performance plots - http://www.orcaware.com/orca/