Backoff strategy

The RetryInterval and RetryCount properties allow you configure the probe's backoff strategy.

The RetryInterval property allows you to specify the length of time (in seconds) that the probe leaves between successive reconnection attempts. If the RetryInterval property is set to 0, the probe tries to reestablish a connection after one second, then two seconds, then four seconds, then eight seconds, and so forth.

When the number of times that the probe has attempted to reconnect reaches that specified by the RetryCount property, the probe shuts down. If you set RetryCount to 0 the probe makes no retry attempts.

The following scenarios will trigger the probe to shutdown, making retry attempts as specified by the RetryInterval and RetryCount properties:

  • There are file opening issues.
  • The file is deleted, with or without the file name being taken over by another file.
  • The file is moved to another location (and so is considered deleted).
  • The file is renamed (and so is considered deleted).
The following scenarios will not trigger probe to shutdown. Instead it writes an error message to the log file and attempts to reopen the file:
  • The file is truncated.
  • The file is overwritten with another file content. For example, file overwriting using the mv command in Linux will cause the inode number to change and so will trigger the probe to attempt to reopen the file.
  • The file creation date has changed (and so is considered overwritten).