# XYMON-MAILACK

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: Version 4.3.30: 18 Aug 2026
Index Return to Main Contents

## NAME

xymon-mailack - permit acknowledging alerts via e-mail

## SYNOPSIS

xymon-mailack --env=FILENAME [--debug]

## DESCRIPTION

xymon-mailack normally runs as an input mail-filter for the xymon user, e.g. by being called from the xymon users' procmailrc(5) file. xymon-mailack recognizes e-mails that are replies to xymond_alert(8) mail alerts, and converts the reply mail into an acknowledge message that is sent to the Xymon system. This permits an administrator to acknowledge an alert via e-mail.

## ADDING INFORMATION TO THE REPLY MAIL

By default, an acknowledgment is valid for 1 hour. If you know in advance that solving the problem is going to take longer, you can change this by adding delay=DURATION to the subject of your mail reply or on a line in the reply message. Duration is in minutes, unless you add a trailing 'h' (for 'hours'), 'd' (for 'days') or 'w' (for 'weeks').

You can also include a message that will show up on the status-page together with the acknowledgment, e.g. to provide an explanation for the issue or some other information to the users. You can either put it at the end of the subject line as msg=Some random text, or you can just enter it in the e-mail as the first non-blank line of text in the mail (a "delay=N" line is ignored when looking for the message text).

## USE WITH PROCMAIL

To setup xymon-mailack, create a .procmailrc file in the xymon-users home-directory with the following contents:

      DEFAULT=$HOME/Mailbox
      LOGFILE=$HOME/procmail.log
      :0
      | $HOME/server/bin/xymon-mailack --env=$HOME/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg

## USE WITH QMAIL

If you are using Qmail to deliver mail locally, you can run xymon-mailack directly from a .qmail file. Setup the xymon-users .qmail file like this:

      | $HOME/server/bin/xymon-mailack --env=$HOME/server/etc/xymonserver.cfg

## OPTIONS

--env=FILENAME
  Load environment from FILENAME, usually xymonserver.cfg.

--debug
  Don't send a message to xymond, but dump the message to stdout.

## SEE ALSO

xymond_alert(8), xymond(8), xymon(7)

## Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
ADDING INFORMATION TO THE REPLY MAIL
USE WITH PROCMAIL
USE WITH QMAIL
OPTIONS
SEE ALSO

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 18:59:22 GMT, August 18, 2026