unable to DESELECT "UPS" alert email (getting spammed!)

[garyd9]

Using ReadyNAS OS 6.2.1 on a 516. Going to System->Settings, expand "Alerts." I'm unable to DEselect the checkbox for UPS alerts. While in there, I noticed I'm also unable to DESELECT the checkbox for "Disk Failure", "Volume", or "Power" (in addition to UPS.)

The reason I'd want to disable UPS alerts is that the UPS is a network UPS, and I'm already getting alerts from the primary machine that the UPS is plugged into. It's very annoying when multiple machines are sending the alerts. (However, I still want the secondary machines to react to UPS events... just not to send email any time there's a power flicker.)

Thanks
Gary

[texterted]

Yep, same for me, more Q&A testing please!

Or is it something we do?

[vandermerwe]

You can't disable those alerts by design, I think, to protect some users (present company excepted) against themselves. I think you will need to create some email rules/filters.

[garyd9]

vandermerwe wrote:
You can't disable those alerts by design, I think, to protect some users (present company excepted) against themselves. I think you will need to create some email rules/filters.

Quite honestly, that is an unacceptable answer.

1. If they can't be disabled, then there shouldn't be a checkbox there to begin with. Just having the checkbox implies that it's usable.

2. Why in the world would I be able to just disable the UPS completely, or disable alert emails for EVERYTHING, but not be able to disable the alert emails for UPS?

[vandermerwe]

1. This is a question you could perhaps ask Netgear. I think it is useful to be able to see what items of hardware and system are being monitored and which I will receive email alerts about. A checkbox is as good as any other indicator to be honest. The fixed alerts are the same as they have been for all prior Netgear readynas lines back almost a decade and they have always been indicated by a checkbox. In their other OSs the fixed ones are greyed out. Many users do not routinely look at logs, disk smart stats, volume fullness and are completely dependent on these email alerts. If they were to inadvertently disable them it could be disastrous for them. I suspect this is the rationale behind having some critical alerts up modifiable.
2. You could of course fail to setup email alerts, effectively disabling the service completely, and not use a UPS, yes. If you do use this feature then this is how it works.

Most respondents ( including myself) on these forums are users, not Netgear employees. If you don't like someone's answer, you can choose to ignore it, or even disagree. Do it politely. I am merely explaining how the software works, my answer was perfectly acceptable.

[garyd9]

vandermerwe wrote:
1. This is a question you could perhaps ask Netgear. ... Most respondents ( including myself) on these forums are users, not Netgear employees. If you don't like someone's answer, you can choose to ignore it, or even disagree. Do it politely. I am merely explaining how the software works, my answer was perfectly acceptable.

Then if you don't know the answer, please restrain from hitting "reply" and typing some stuff about checkboxes existing just to be pretty and having no function (such as being checked/unchecked.)

Fortunately, there ARE netgear employees on these forums who will, I'm sure, be happy to take up the challenge and give reasonable answers. (I'd be shocked if they responded that the check boxes really are there just to be pretty, but I have to admit that I wouldn't be TOO surprised...)

vandermerwe wrote:

I think it is useful to be able to see what items of hardware and system are being monitored and which I will receive email alerts about. A checkbox is as good as any other indicator to be honest. The fixed alerts are the same as they have been for all prior Netgear readynas lines back almost a decade and they have always been indicated by a checkbox. In their other OSs the fixed ones are greyed out. .

Ah, but these checkboxes are NOT grayed out. It's the same shade/color as the ones that can be used. Hence, it seems reasonable that they CAN be used.

Please: instead of taking guesses on why things work the way they do, and then attempting to lecture someone on how you think they should react when they respond that your guess is unacceptable, just try to ignore this thread and go on. Bad answers are worse than no answer at all.

Thank you
Gary

[mdgm-ntgr]

The border is greyed out for some of these. The ones that can't be disabled are shown there for informative purposes to let you know that we send email alerts about those things.

vandermerwe's answers were good.

We have received feature requests for customising email alerts.

However UPS alerts are very important and I think we would be reluctant to allow disabling those alerts.

[StephenB]

garyd9 wrote:
...Why in the world would I be able to just disable the UPS completely, or disable alert emails for EVERYTHING, but not be able to disable the alert emails for UPS?...

mdgm wrote:
...However UPS alerts are very important and I think we would be reluctant to allow disabling those alerts.

I think I'm with garyd9 on this. Email alerts are an optional feature to begin with, so there is no harm in allowing users to enable/disable any alerts they wish.

And garyd9 has a specific use case that makes sense to me. If you have a networked UPS that is monitored by several pieces of equipment the alerts are redundant. If you're an IT guy, you don't want to be swamped with alerts from all the stuff you have deployed in the facility. Often they just get in the way, and make it harder to identify the main problem - especially if you are scrolling through a swarm of them on your mobile device.

On the UI front, checkboxes are intended to be checked/unchecked :shock: There are other ways to list items that are hard-wired, I think it just creates confusion if you try to use checkboxes for that.

[garyd9]

mdgm wrote:
The border is greyed out for some of these. The ones that can't be disabled are shown there for informative purposes to let you know that we send email alerts about those things.

They don't appear grayed out (disabled) to me using Chrome on a Win7/64 machine. In addition, the way the functional and non-functional checkboxes are mixed together is nothing short of a cosmetic design nightmare. Here's how the check boxes are ordered in the alerts:

[]Disk Failure []Disk Full []Fan []Volume []Disk Temperature []Power []UPS.

Of those, it seems that I can only deselect "Disk Full", "Fan", and "Disk Temperature".

In other words, three of the seven checkboxes work, and those three are (seemingly) randomly scattered between the others.

Finally, in addition to the browser noted above, I also can't seem to see any difference in the rendering of the checkboxes on IE 10 running on Windows Server2008 R2.

mdgm wrote:
However UPS alerts are very important and I think we would be reluctant to allow disabling those alerts.

You know I'm going to pick that statement apart, right? 😉

First, please re-read the first post in this thread for the specific use-case. The UPS alerts are redundant. In other situations (such as certain intelligent power supplies), the email alerts would also be redundant as the UPS itself would be sending the alerts. The readyNAS KNOWS that it's not the primary controller of the UPS in this case, as it's a "networked" UPS (for this readynas.) That means that for each power flicker, I get 4 emails. (Two from this NAS, and 2 from the NAS that the UPS is physically attached to.) The excess spam is NOT very important. The only thing that would be important (in regards to the UPS for this NAS) would be an alert if communication was lost.

Second, you state that UPS alerts are very important. Being that I can disable "disk full", "fan", and "disk temperature" alerts, does that imply that those are less important than UPS alerts? A fan failure (which can lead to hardware failure) is less important than a power flicker that really has no impact on the running system? A "disk full" alert is less important than a minor power flicker? Which of these events should be "I have to deal with this immediately!", and which are completely meaningless?

I'm suggesting that, of these seven checkboxes, the UPS alerts might very well be the LEAST important when the alerts are only telling the admin that the system is working the way it's supposed to. Sure, if the UPS is on battery for more than a second or two, AND if it's not a networked UPS, then the UPS alerts might be important. However, that's not the case here.

Keep in mind that this is a NAS. While logged in as admin, I should have as much control as possible. If making a selection is a bad idea, display a warning, but don't handcuff the administrator. This isn't an Apple consumer device.

Take care
Gary