SecuritySpy Error Report controls
Hi guys.
I have SecuritySpy running on a headless Mac mini that is often used for other tasks as well as SecuritySpy. It has virtual machines and other things running on it pretty much full time, which isn't a problem.
However, sometimes I will also use this Mac to encode HD video with Handbrake for a few days at a time when I need to let long-running Handbrake sessions complete without disrupting my workflow on other machines. When this is going on, all cores on the CPU are fairly maxed out (though I do use AppPolice to limit Handbrake processes a bit to keep heat generation down and maintain responsiveness of other processes).
Whenever I have this going on, SecuritySpy sends me a handful of Error Report notification emails each day, with the message:
"Very high CPU usage detected - reduce camera frame rates, check recording settings, or quit other applications."
I know that I can bulk enable/disable all error report emails entirely, but I would like to put in a feature request to allow more granular control of these notifications:
• It would be nice to be able to enable and disable individual types of notifications ("high CPU usage", "upload error", "communication error", "software hang", and so on).
• It would be nice to be able to control or limit the frequency of notifications (either as a whole, or for each type of notification).
• It would be nice to be able to have some types of notifications sent to the macOS Notification Center, and others sent as email messages.
Thanks again for all of your hard work! I am very pleased with SecuritySpy as a whole. : )
I have SecuritySpy running on a headless Mac mini that is often used for other tasks as well as SecuritySpy. It has virtual machines and other things running on it pretty much full time, which isn't a problem.
However, sometimes I will also use this Mac to encode HD video with Handbrake for a few days at a time when I need to let long-running Handbrake sessions complete without disrupting my workflow on other machines. When this is going on, all cores on the CPU are fairly maxed out (though I do use AppPolice to limit Handbrake processes a bit to keep heat generation down and maintain responsiveness of other processes).
Whenever I have this going on, SecuritySpy sends me a handful of Error Report notification emails each day, with the message:
"Very high CPU usage detected - reduce camera frame rates, check recording settings, or quit other applications."
I know that I can bulk enable/disable all error report emails entirely, but I would like to put in a feature request to allow more granular control of these notifications:
• It would be nice to be able to enable and disable individual types of notifications ("high CPU usage", "upload error", "communication error", "software hang", and so on).
• It would be nice to be able to control or limit the frequency of notifications (either as a whole, or for each type of notification).
• It would be nice to be able to have some types of notifications sent to the macOS Notification Center, and others sent as email messages.
Thanks again for all of your hard work! I am very pleased with SecuritySpy as a whole. : )
Comments
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I understand the utility of what you are suggesting, however there are literally hundreds of different warning and error messages that could be generated by SecuritySpy, and creating a method and user interface for filtering them would be significant work, for very little utility for the majority of users. Therefore I'm afraid I think it's unlikely that we would implement everything you are suggesting.
The main distinction that SecuritySpy makes is between warning vs. error messages, and you can already remove the warnings from the email notifications if you want to (via the "Include warnings" option under Preferences > General). For example, the message about high CPU usage is a warning.
At the moment, SecuritySpy limits the frequency of error report emails to once every 30 minutes. Perhaps we can make this period adjustable, to avoid frequent emails when there are lots of messages in a short space of time for some reason. -
I understand.
I appreciate that there is a throttle, and also like the idea of making the throttle period adjustable. So I would appreciate that feature.
Thanks for explaining about the distinction between warnings and errors. I wasn't aware that was a warning (the email subject for this one is "SecuritySpy Error Report"). I think it would help if there was a list of which messages are warnings and which are errors. At the moment, I am unsure which messages I will miss when I disable warnings. But I'll go ahead and do it for now, since my inbox is really filling up with this particular warning.
