# XYMON

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: Version 4.3.30: 25 Jan 2026
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## NAME

xymon - Xymon client communication program

## SYNOPSIS

xymon [options] RECIPIENT message

## DESCRIPTION

xymon(1) is the client program used to communicate with a Xymon server. It is frequently used by Xymon client systems to send in status messages and pager alerts on local tests.

In Xymon, the xymon program is also used for administrative purposes, e.g. to rename or delete hosts, or to disable hosts that are down for longer periods of time.

## OPTIONS AND PARAMETERS

--debug
  Enable debugging. This prints out details about how the connection to the Xymon server is being established.

--proxy=http://PROXYSERVER:PROXYPORT/
  When sending the status messages via HTTP, use this server as an HTTP proxy instead of connecting directly to the Xymon server.

--timeout=N
  Specifies the timeout for connecting to the Xymon server, in seconds. The default is 5 seconds.

--response
  The xymon utility normally knows when to expect a response from the server, so this option is not required. However, it will cause any response from the server to be displayed.

--merge
  Merge the command line message text with the data provided on standard input, and send the result to the Xymon server. The message text provided on the command line becomes the first line of the merged message.

RECIPIENT
  The RECIPIENT parameter defines which server receives the message. If RECIPIENT is given as "0.0.0.0", then the message is sent to all of the servers listed in the XYMSERVERS environment variable.

  Usually, a client will use "$XYMSRV" for the RECIPIENT parameter, as this is defined for the client scripts to automatically contain the correct value.

  The RECIPIENT parameter may be a URL for a webserver that has the xymoncgimsg.cgi or similar script installed. This tunnels the Xymon messages to the Xymon server using standard HTTP protocol. The xymoncgimsg.cgi(8) CGI tool (included in Xymon) must be installed on the webserver for the HTTP transport to work.

MESSAGE
  The message parameter is the message to be sent across to the Xymon server. Messages must be enclosed in quotes, but by doing so they can span multiple lines. The maximum size of a message is defined by the maximum allowed length of your shell's command-line, and is typically 8-32 KB.

  If you need to send longer status messages, you can specify "@" as the message: xymon will then read the status message from its stdin.

## XYMON MESSAGE SYNTAX

This section lists the most commonly used messages in the Xymon protocol.

Each message must begin with one of the Xymon commands. Where a HOSTNAME is specified, it must have any dots in the hostname changed to commas if the Xymon FQDN setting is enabled (which is the default). So the host "www.foo.com", for example, would report as "www,foo,com".

status[+LIFETIME][/group:GROUP] HOSTNAME.TESTNAME COLOR <additional text>
  This sends in a status message for a single test (column) on a single host. TESTNAME is the name of the column where this test will show up; any name is valid except that using dots in the testname will not work. COLOR must be one of the valid colors: "green", "yellow", "red" or "clear". The colors "blue" and "purple" - although valid colors - should not be sent in a status message, as these are handled specially by the Xymon server. As a special case (for supporting older clients), "client" can be used as the name of the color. This causes the status message to be handled by Xymon as a "client" data message, and the TESTNAME parameter is used as the "collector id".
  The "additional text" normally includes a local timestamp and a summary of the test result on the first line. Any lines following the first one are free-form, and can include any information that may be useful to diagnose the problem being reported.
  The LIFETIME defines how long this status is valid after being received by the Xymon server. The default is 30 minutes, but you can set any period you like. E.g. for a custom test that runs once an hour, you will want to set this to at least 60 minutes - otherwise the status will go purple after 30 minutes. It is a good idea to set the LIFETIME to slightly longer than the interval between your tests, to allow for variations in the time it takes your test to complete. The LIFETIME is in minutes, unless you add an "h" (hours), "d" (days) or "w" (weeks) immediately after the number, e.g. "status+5h" for a status that is valid for 5 hours.
  The GROUP option is used to direct alerts from the status to a specific group. It is currently used for status generated from the Xymon clients' data, e.g. to direct alerts for a "procs" status to different people, depending on exactly which process is down.

notify HOSTNAME.TESTNAME <message text>
  This triggers an informational message to be sent to those who receive alerts for this HOSTNAME+TESTNAME combination, according to the rules defined in alerts.cfg(5) This is used by the enadis.cgi(1) tool to notify people about hosts being disabled or enabled, but can also serve as a general way of notifying server administrators.

data HOSTNAME.DATANAME<newline><additional text>
  The "data" message allows tools to send data about a host, without it appearing as a column on the Xymon webpages. This is used, for example, to report statistics about a host, e.g. vmstat data, which does not in itself represent something that has a red, yellow or green identity. It is used by RRD bottom-feeder modules, among others. In Xymon, data messages are by default processed only by the xymond_rrd(8) module. If you want to handle data-messages using an external application, you may want to enable the xymond_filestore(8) module for data-messages, to store data-messages in a format compatible with how the Big Brother daemon does.

disable HOSTNAME.TESTNAME DURATION <additional text>
  Disables a specific test for DURATION minutes. This will cause the status of this test to be listed as "blue" on the Xymon server, and no alerts for this host/test will be generated. If DURATION is given as a number followed by s/m/h/d, it is interpreted as being in seconds/minutes/hours/days respectively. To disable a test until it becomes OK, use "-1" as the DURATION. To disable all tests for a host, use an asterisk "*" for TESTNAME.

enable HOSTNAME.TESTNAME
  Re-enables a test that had been disabled.

query HOSTNAME.TESTNAME
  Query the Xymon server for the latest status reported for this particular test. If the host/test status is known, the response is the first line of the status report - the current color will be the first word on the line. Additional lines of text that might be present on the status message cannot be retrieved.
  This allows any Xymon client to determine the status of a particular test, whether it is one pertaining to the host where the client is running, some other host, or perhaps the result of a combined test from multiple hosts managed by combostatus(1) This will typically be useful to Xymon client extension scripts, that need to determine the status of other hosts, for example, to decide if an automatic recovery action should be initiated.

config FILENAME
  Retrieve one of the Xymon configuration files from the server. This command allows a client to pull files from the $XYMONHOME/etc/ directory on the server, allowing for semi-automatic updates of the client configuration. Since the configuration files are designed to have a common file for the configuration of all hosts in the system - and this is in fact the recommended way of configuring your clients - this makes it easier to keep the configuration files synchronized.

drop HOSTNAME
  Removes all data stored about the host HOSTNAME. It is assumed that you have already deleted the host from the hosts.cfg configuration file.

drop HOSTNAME TESTNAME
  Remove data about a single test (column).

rename OLDHOSTNAME NEWHOSTNAME
  Rename all data for a host that has had its name changed. You should do this after changing the hostname in the hosts.cfg configuration file.

rename HOSTNAME OLDTESTNAME NEWTESTNAME
  Rename data about a single test (column).

xymondlog HOSTNAME.TESTNAME
  Retrieve the Xymon status-log for a single test. The first line of the response contains a series of fields separated by a pipe-sign:

  hostname The name of the host

  testname The name of the test

  color Status color (green, yellow, red, blue, clear, purple)

  testflags For network tests, the flags indicating details about the test (used by xymongen).

  lastchange Unix timestamp when the status color last changed.

  logtime Unix timestamp when the log message was received.

  validtime Unix timestamp when the log message is no longer valid (it goes purple at this time).

  acktime Either -1 or Unix timestamp when an active acknowledgement expires.

  disabletime Either -1 or Unix timestamp when the status is no longer disabled.

  sender IP address where the status was received from.

  cookie Either -1 or the cookie value used to acknowledge an alert.

  ackmsg Empty or the acknowledgment message sent when the status was acknowledged. Newline, pipe-signs and backslashes are escaped with a backslash, C-style.

  dismsg Empty or the message sent when the status was disabled. Newline, pipe-signs and backslashes are escaped with a backslash, C-style.

  After the first line comes the full status log in plain text format.

xymondxlog HOSTNAME.TESTNAME
  Retrieves an XML string containing the status log as with the "xymondlog" command.

xymondboard [CRITERIA] [fields=FIELDLIST]
  Retrieves a summary of the status of all known tests available to the Xymon daemon.

  By default - if no CRITERIA is provided - it returns one line for all status messages that are found in Xymon. You can filter the response by selection specific page, host, test, color or various other fields. The PAGEPATH, NETWORK, HOSTNAME, TESTNAME, and *MSG parameters are interpreted perl-compatible regular expressions; the COLOR parameter accepts multiple colors separated by commas; the *TIME values accept unix epoch timestamps. Other variables identified in xymon-xmh(5) may also be used.

  Because host filtration is done before test filtration, it's more efficient (with very large data sets) to use PAGEPATH, HOSTNAME, NETWORK, and other XMH_ filters when possible, before globally filtering with COLOR, *MSG, *TIME, or TESTNAME.

  You can filter on, for example, both a hostname and a testname.

  page=PAGEPATH Include only tests from hosts found on the PAGEPATH page in the hosts.cfg file.

  net=NETWORK Include only tests from hosts with this NET: tag

  ip=IPAddress Include only tests from hosts with this IP address. This is a regex, not CIDR.

  host=HOSTNAME Include only tests from the host HOSTNAME

  test=TESTNAME Include only tests with the testname TESTNAME

  color=COLORNAME Include only tests where the status color is COLORNAME

  tag=TAGNAME Include only hosts with a certain tag specified in the hosts.cfg(5) line. Note that only items known to xymon components are included here; arbitrary text is not included

  XMH_string=VALUE Include only hosts with a xymon-xmh(5) variable matching this value

  Advanced Filtering

  msg=MESSAGE Include only tests with full content matching MESSAGE. Use "\s" to escape spaces (or other PCRE strings)

  ackmsg=MESSAGE Include only tests with acknowledgement(s) MESSAGE. Use "\s" to escape spaces (or other PCRE strings)

  dismsg=MESSAGE Include only tests that have been disabled with strings matching MESSAGE. Use "\s" to escape spaces (or other PCRE strings). (It is most efficient to pair this with color=blue.)

  Timestamp Filters

  Certain fields (explained below) can be filtered with unix timestamps and with the following inequalities: >= > <= < = !=

  These filters are: lastchange, logtime, validtime, acktime, disabletime

  The response is one line for each status that matches the CRITERIA, or all statuses if no criteria is specified. The line is composed of a number of fields, separated by a pipe-sign. You can select which fields to retrieve by listing them in the FIELDLIST. The following fields are available:

  hostname The name of the host

  testname The name of the test

  color Status color (green, yellow, red, blue, clear, purple)

  flags For network tests, the flags indicating details about the test (used by xymongen).

  lastchange Unix timestamp when the status color last changed.

  logtime Unix timestamp when the log message was received.

  validtime Unix timestamp when the log message is no longer valid (it goes purple at this time).

  acktime Either -1 or Unix timestamp when an active acknowledgement expires.

  disabletime Either -1 or Unix timestamp when the status is no longer disabled.

  sender IP address where the status was received from.

  cookie Either -1 or the cookie value used to acknowledge an alert.

  line1 First line of status log.

  ackmsg Empty (if no acknowledgement is active), or the text of the acknowledge message.

  dismsg Empty (if the status is currently enabled), or the text of the disable message.

  msg The full text of the current status message.

  client Shows "Y" if there is client data available, "N" if not.

  clntstamp Timestamp when the last client message was received, in Unix "epoch" format.

  acklist List of the current acknowledgements for a test. This is a text string with multiple fields, delimited by a colon character. There are 5 fields: Timestamp for when the ack was generated and when it expires; the the "ack level"; the user who sent the ack; and the acknowledgement text.

  flapinfo Tells if the status is flapping. 5 fields, delimited by "/": A "0" if the status is not flapping and "1" if it is flapping; timestamp when the latest status change was recorded and when the first statuschange was recorded; and the two colors that the status is flapping between.

  stats Number of status-changes that have been recorded for this status since xymond was started.

  modifiers Lists all active modifiers for this status (i.e. updates sent using a "modify" command).

  XMH_* The XMH-tags refer to the Xymon hosts.cfg(5) configuration settings. A full list of these can be found in the xymon-xmh(5) man-page.

  The ackmsg, dismsg and msg fields have certain characters encoded: Newline is "\n", TAB is "\t", carriage return is "\r", a pipe-sign is "\p", and a backslash is "\\".

  If the "fields" parameter is omitted, a default set of hostname,testname,color,flags,lastchange,logtime,validtime,acktime,disabletime,sender,cookie,line1 is used.

xymondxboard
  Retrieves an XML string with the summary of all status logs as for the "xymondboard" command.

hostinfo [CRITERIA]
  Retrieves the current configuration of a host (i.e. the hosts.cfg(5) definition). CRITERIA selects which host(s) to report, and is identical to the CRITERIA in the xymondboard command.

  The response is one line for each host that matches the CRITERIA, or all hosts if no criteria is specified. The line is composed of a number of fields, separated by a pipe-sign. The first two fields will always be the hostname and the IP-address. The remaining fields - if any - are the hosts.cfg tags in no particular order.

download FILENAME
  Download a file from the Xymon server's download directory.

client[/COLLECTORID] HOSTNAME.OSTYPE [HOSTCLASS]
  Used to send a "client" message to the Xymon server. Client messages are generated by the Xymon client; when sent to the Xymon server they are matched against the rules in the analysis.cfg(5) configuration file, and status messages are generated for the client-side tests. The COLLECTORID is used when sending client-data that are additions to the standard client data. The data will be concatenated with the normal client data.

clientlog HOSTNAME [section=SECTIONNAME[,SECTIONNAME...]]
  Retrieves the current raw client message last sent by HOSTNAME. The optional "section" filter is used to select specific sections of the client data.

ping
  Attempts to contact the Xymon server. If successful, the Xymon server version ID is reported.

pullclient
  This message is used when fetching client data via the "pull" mechanism implemented by xymonfetch(8) and msgcache(8) for clients that cannot connect directly to the Xymon server.

ghostlist
  Report a list of ghost clients seen by the Xymon server. Ghosts are systems that report data to the Xymon server, but are not listed in the hosts.cfg file.

schedule [TIMESTAMP COMMAND]
  Schedules a command sent to the Xymon server for execution at a later time. E.g. used to schedule disabling of a host or service at sometime in the future. COMMAND is a complete Xymon command such as the ones listed above. TIMESTAMP is the Unix epoch time when the command will be executed.
  If no parameters are given, the currently scheduled tasks are listed in the response. The response is one line per scheduled command, with the job-id, the time when the command will be executed, the IP address from which this was sent, and the full command string.
  To cancel a previously scheduled command, "schedule cancel JOBID" can be used. JOBID is a number provided as the first item in the output from the schedule list.

notes FILENAME
  The message text will be stored in $XYMONHOME/notes/FILENAME which is then used as hyperlinks from hostnames or column names. This requires that the "storenotes" task is enabled in tasks.cfg (it is disabled by default). FILENAME cannot contain any directory path - these are stripped automatically.

usermsg ID
  These messages will be relayed directly to modules listening on the "user" channel of the Xymon daemon. This is intended for custom communication between client-side modules and the Xymon server.

modify HOSTNAME.TESTNAME COLOR SOURCE CAUSE
  Modify the color of a specific status, without generating a complete status message. This is for backend processors (e.g. RRD graphs) that can override the color of a status based on some criteria determined outside the normal flow of a status. E.g. the normal "conn" status may appear to be green since it merely checks on whether a host can be ping'ed or not; the RRD handler can then use a "modify" command to override this is the actual ping responsetime exceeds a given threshold. (See the "DS" configuration setting in analysis.cfg(5) for how to do this). SOURCE is some identification of the module that generates the "modify" message - future modifications must use the same source. There may be several sources that modify the same status (the most severe status then becomes the actual color of the status). CAUSE is a one-line text string explaining the reason for overriding the normal status color - it will be displayed on the status webpage.

## EXAMPLE

Send a normal status message to the Xymon server, using the standard Xymon protocol on TCP port 1984:
$ $XYMON $XYMSRV "status www,foo,com.http green `date` Web OK"

Send the same status message, but using HTTP protocol via the webserver's xymoncgimsg.cgi script:
$ $XYMON http://bb.foo.com/cgi-bin/xymoncgimsg.cgi "status www,foo,com.http green `date` Web OK"

Use "query" message to determine the color of the "www" test, and restart Apache if it is red:

$ WWW=`$XYMON $XYMSRV "query www,foo,com.www" | awk '{print $1}'`
$ if [ "$WWW" = "red" ]; then /etc/init.d/apache restart; fi

Use "config" message to update a local mytest.cfg file (but only if we get a response):

$ $XYMON $XYMSRV "config mytest.cfg" >/tmp/mytest.cfg.new
$ if [ -s /tmp/mytest.cfg.new ]; then
mv /tmp/mytest.cfg.new $XYMONHOME/etc/mytest.cfg
fi

Send a very large status message that has been built in the file "statusmsg.txt". Instead of providing it on the command-line, pass it via stdin to the xymon command:

$ cat statusmsg.txt | $XYMON $XYMSRV "@"

## SEE ALSO

combostatus(1), hosts.cfg(5), xymonserver.cfg(5), xymon(7)

## Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS AND PARAMETERS
XYMON MESSAGE SYNTAX
EXAMPLE
SEE ALSO

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 18:36:45 GMT, January 25, 2026