MySQL Bugs: #46689: Make MEM email alert subject lines configurable

Bug #46689	Make MEM email alert subject lines configurable
Submitted:	13 Aug 2009 8:45	Modified:	23 Oct 2009 15:24
Reporter:	Roger David Nay	Email Updates:
Status:	Closed	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Enterprise Monitor: Configuration	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:	All	OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Sloan Childers	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
When receiving an email alert it's hard to tell at a glance which ones are important/useful/related to a box I really care about, because the
first 30+ characters are exactly the same and too long. By 30 chars most of the viewable subject in most peoples' inbox is occupied, especially of you have a mailling list tag too. This renders the subject more or less useless because it's not visible unless one actually opens the email. Some of these words are superfluous and not useful.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor Info Alert: Slave Too Far Behind Master (mc01xxxxx-06)
MySQL Enterprise Monitor Warning Alert: Security Alterations Detected: User Privileges Granted (xxx1-backup-02)
MySQL Enterprise Monitor Critical Alert: Security Alterations Have Been Detected (lhr1-xxxsql-02)

To make these emails more useful I would like to change the subject to be something (respectively) like:

Merlin Info: (hostname) Slave Too Far Behind Master
Merlin Warning: (hostname) Security Alterations: User Privileges Granted
Merlin Critical: (hostname) Security Alterations Detected

How to repeat:
N/A

Suggested fix:
Make the subject line configurable or various options for shortened versions of the message info plus options for reordering the message subject.

Sloan Childers writes: 
Look at SMS email format to see if that might suffice in the short term.

Sloan Childers writes: 
Folks really should be using the email headers instead of parsing the contents of the email.

X-MySQLAlert-Severity
X-MySQLAlert-Server
X-MySQLAlert-Category

Sloan Childers writes: 
patch pushed to 2.2/trunk

Keith Russell writes: 
Patch installed in versions => 2.2.0.1514.

Marcos Palacios writes: 
Verified fixed in Monitor build 2.2.0.1515.

The Settings > Manage Notification Groups: 'Create Group' dialog has a new field, 'Subject Line', which allows for a customized subject line.

Hmm. Usually to ensure _consistency_ all messages should be sent with a consistent subject line so making this configurable on a per group basis seems slightly suspect.

I would have expected to have had a global configuration and then to have various "variables" which can be used to populate the subject. Stuff such as:

$host_name
$group_name
$status   and possibly $previous_status
$problem_description
$duration_of_problem or $start_time_of_problem
....

It's not clear exactly what can be configured from the command line.

We also anticipate using REST to automatically configure several merlin groups based on external information: (load balancer settings, e.g. which servers are in one load balancer group or another). So having to define the subject settings of notifications for each server group seems rather tedious, and unnecessary, unless you also have a configurable default and normal behaviour is to use the configurable default subject, unless a specific "per server group" subject has been defined.

An entry was added to the 2.2.0 changelog:

The subject line in alert emails was not configurable.