Rudder

Would it be an idea to check if a node is online, before calculating status? When managing desktops, desktops will be offline sometimes, so i have no way to see if a nodes offline or if rudder-agent disfunctions. I'm going to manage 20+ desktops with Rudder and they will be offline several times. I can assume a machine with an no answer state is offline, but it could also be that rudder-agent is broken on that node.

Some thoughts on IRC:

16:30 < jooooooon> dnns: it's not always possible to check if a node is 
                   offline, because of firewalls rules, network topology etc
16:30 < jooooooon> :/
16:34 < dnns> jooooooon: it's maybe not always possible to see if a node's 
              online by pinging. but maybe the node could send a message with 
              curl to the rudder server to say hi' i'm online
16:34 < jooooooon> that's kinda the logic we already apply with reports tho, no?
16:35 < dnns> jooooooon: how can i see the difference between a node which is 
              offline and a node with a disfunctional rudder-agent/rsyslog?
16:36 < jooooooon> dnns: ahhh, I see what you mean
16:37 < jooooooon> any ideas on how to display that differently?
16:38 < dnns> jooooooon: Succes | Repaired | Error | No Answer | Offline
16:38 < dnns> ?
16:38 < jooooooon> I like it :)
16:39 < jooooooon> I just worry that we can't really *know* a node is offline
16:39 < jooooooon> but I suppose a node that doesn't contact the Rudder server 
                   is pretty much offline
16:39 < jooooooon> maybe "No answer" should be renamed too?
16:40 < ncharles> maybe we could have some kind of snmp probe ?
16:40 < Kegeruneku> Like uh, a ping probe ?
16:41 < Kegeruneku> instead
16:41 < dnns> well, no anwer can also mean that the node is up but doesn't send 
              out logs
16:44 < jooooooon> but we can't really differentiate between that scenario and 
                   "offline" 
16:45 < Kegeruneku> Well, Off line = Off the line = No connection between two 
                    peers
16:45 < Kegeruneku> It's not really wrong :