Title: Notification Spooler can now handle incoming and outgoing persistent TCP connections
Level: 2
Component: notifications
Compatible: incomp
Version: 1.2.7i1
Date: 1425463954
Class: feature

The Check_MK Notification Spooler (<tt>mknotifyd</tt>) has completely been rewritten. It
now:

<ul>
<li>uses persistent TCP connections instead of connecting for each notifiction</li>
<li>can use outgoing TCP connections for <i>receiving</i> notifictions</li>
<li>can handle an arbitrary number of parallel connctions</li>
<li>monitors connections with heart beats</li>
<li>is being monitored by two new checks for the general state and for each connection</li>
</ul>

The global configuration for the spooler has changed. Your existing settings
are still supported but have vanished from WATO. As soon as you create a
new configuration that will override your legacy configuration.

The new checks that monitor the spooler require an update of the Check_MK
Agent for Linux on the Check_MK server. It needs OMD based installaions
paths. All spoolers will automatically be discovered. The new checks are
<tt>mknotifyd</tt> and <tt>mknotifyd.connection</tt>.

The spooler write messages into <tt>var/log/mknotifyd.log</tt>. There are
three log levels, which can be configured in the global settings of the
spooler. We propose starting with the highest log level. Also a file
<tt>var/log/mknotifyd.log</tt> is being written every 20 seconds. It
shows the state of the spooler and its connections. This is being used
for the monitoring of the spooler.

Note: To get the new mknotifyd running you need to reconfigure its global settings.
Otherwise it will use the incompatible configuration of the previous version.
