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Is there a way to disable the "unknown" type of sensor state?

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We would like to have a way to disable the unknown status of a sensor in the same way that you have allowed the disabling of "unusual" sensor state in System Settings. We find that having the down and up states for sensors enough. Also we have emails notifications which notify when a device state is UP, but this can be from a DOWN state or from an UNKNOWN state. We would prefer if we only got notifications of UP status from a DOWN state and UP status from UNKNOWN state was ignored and not notified to us.

disable notifications prtg sensors unknown

Created on Aug 11, 2014 4:50:03 PM



9 Replies

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Hi Stuart,

When ignoring an UNKNOWN state, it would most likely be reported as DOWN. This will stiil generate the same number of notifications as 'UP from UNKNOWN' will now be 'UP from DOWN'

Created on Aug 14, 2014 7:40:05 AM



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Hello,

the unknown state cannot be disabled. It's an internal state, when sensors receive no answer at all (neither a successful result nor an error). Ideally, this sensor state should not appear. If it does, it should be checked, why and where does it appear. That would be the question here, on which sensors does this happen, and when exactly.
The Unknown State does not activate Triggers on Down - Notifications. It may cause notifications to be sent though, which are set under "When conditions clears..." on a Trigger that is already active (on condition down for example). Because this "When condition clears" refers to any other sensor state than the initial trigger condition.

best regards.

Created on Aug 14, 2014 11:19:58 AM by  Torsten Lindner [Paessler Support]



Votes:

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If the unknown state cannot be disabled, can we have an option when creating or editing a state trigger to ignore the unknown state. The issue we have is that we cannot edit the "When the condition clears..." field to ignore a change of state from unknown to down. It is useful to be alerted when a sensor has changed state to UP, but we do not find it at all useful to be advised when the status of sensor has changed from down to unknown or from unknown to down, as this generates (in our view) pointless notification emails

Created on Feb 27, 2015 1:36:37 PM



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Is there any way that you could avoid getting notifications from UNKNOWN state?

Created on Nov 12, 2015 12:37:58 PM



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+1

I agree. We don't want unknown or partial alerts. Only up or down notifications. If a sensor goes unknown, it may need to be checked, but by our server guys not the network group. So really these alerts are useless, greatly annoying, and causes questions and confusion.

Please allow us to specify up notifications only when the down condition clears. Thanks.

Created on Nov 12, 2015 1:51:00 PM



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I'm afraid currently there are no plans for specific trigger options to change "condition clearing"-notification, to only be triggered upon changes into certain sensor states.
As for notifications that are triggered by the unknown state here, we recommend to rather inspect why the sensors go into the unknown state in the first place, as this sensor state should only occur in very rare cases (for example after adding a new sensor until it get's its first value).

Created on Nov 12, 2015 3:45:33 PM by  Torsten Lindner [Paessler Support]



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Something else that would be helpful here is to allow a latency setting for "When condition clears...".

So the last line could say:

When condition clears "for 60 seconds" after a notification was triggered perform "Email NOC"

This would resolve the partial down and temporary unknown sensor alerts mention above in this thread.

Created on Nov 14, 2015 3:24:33 AM



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Hello, still no solution to not be notified of sensors in UNKNOWN state ?

Created on Apr 21, 2023 9:59:23 AM



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Hey,

You can setup a state trigger for sensors if the sensors are in an unknown state. This trigger can be entered in the probe level for the sensor state which will then be inherited down to the sensor level.

Created on Apr 26, 2023 8:15:02 AM by  Marijan Horsky [Paessler Support]




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