Re: alarm handler confusion (and solution)

[Ralph.Lange@mail.bessy.de]

  > yup. did too, ours was dated of some time in 1997. 
  > Found quite a few other improvements too.

Good for you...

  > Question: I put
  > alh -filter a -s <config file>
  > and it runs without beeping ok. The way I understand the documentation
  > the "- filter a" should make the blinking of alarms go away when
  > the alarms are no longer active. Am I understanding this wrong or
  > did I write the command line wrong? This would be nice to have
  > because we run several alarm handlers and it would be nice to just 
  > look at one screen and know if there are alarms that are still 
  > active.

Hmm ... well ... the "-filter" option actually does something different:

It is intended for alhs that get started dynamically (i.e. from medm2k
panels with a "show errors" button). Starting these with the cmdline
options "-mainwindow -filter a" gets you an open alarm handler window
that just shows the active alarms. Background: some of our complex
devices (RF-PLCs) have hundreds of error bits - and noone wants to
scroll down pages of ok-channels to find the few bits that are active.

You should look at the A and T bits of the channel mask instead. Setting
the T bit frees the operator from acknowledging an alarm that went away
meanwhile, channels with an A bit don't need acknowledgement at all. You
will have to create different configs for the "overview" and the
"operator" alhs, though. (Or reconfigure manually after start.)

Hope this helps,
Ralph