A downtime is a window during which an object's notifications are silenced and every event in that window is marked as expected rather than as a surprise. jaque schedules three kinds: fixed, which silences a window you name up front; flexible, which starts only once the object actually has a problem inside that window; and triggered, which starts and stops with another downtime. A fourth shape, recurring, is declared in config rather than scheduled: an object is in downtime whenever a named timeperiod is open.

1. Fixed downtimes

The window is the downtime: from start it silences the object, and at end it stops, whether or not anything went wrong in between. This is what SCHEDULE_HOST_DOWNTIME/SCHEDULE_SVC_DOWNTIME and the API's ScheduleDowntime give you when no other kind is asked for.

2. Flexible downtimes

A flexible downtime carries a start, an end and a duration. It does not silence anything by itself: it starts the first time the object enters a problem status inside [start, end), and then it lasts duration from that point, which can run past end. The window only bounds when it may start. An object that never has a problem inside the window never enters downtime at all.

3. Triggered downtimes

A triggered downtime names another downtime as its trigger and carries its own start and end as a cap. It starts the moment its trigger downtime starts, and it ends at whichever comes first: its own end, or the trigger's own end. Cancelling the trigger cancels every downtime it triggered.

4. Taking effect, and catching up after a restart

Whenever a downtime actually takes effect, that is a fact jaque records: a fixed downtime at its start time, a flexible one the moment a problem puts it into effect, a triggered one the moment its trigger takes effect. An engine that was not running at the moment a boundary would have been crossed does at startup what it would have done had it been up: a fixed downtime whose start has already passed takes effect immediately; a flexible downtime whose window is still open re-checks the object's current status; a triggered downtime re-checks whether its trigger is currently in effect. Nothing here is rederived from wall-clock arithmetic against the log; it is the same check the engine would have made at the time.

5. Recurring downtimes

A recurring downtime is not scheduled at all: it is declared in config, against a selector and a timeperiod, and every object the selector matches is in downtime whenever that timeperiod is open.

timeperiods: {
	backup_window: {
		timezone: "Europe/Madrid"
		ranges: {sunday: "02:00-04:00"}
	}
}

downtimes: {
	nightly_backup: {
		selector: "role=db"
		scope:    "service"
		period:   "backup_window"
		comment:  "nightly backup"
	}
}

selector is a label selector; scope is host or service, and it must match at least one object of that scope or the config fails to load. period names a timeperiod. Nothing about a recurring downtime is written to the event log or persisted between occurrences: being in downtime is simply whether the period is open right now. It cannot be scheduled, edited or cancelled through the API or the FIFO, and it is never a trigger for another downtime. Every read surface, the dashboard, the API and Livestatus, shows the occurrence currently in effect, or the next one if none is, the same way it shows any other downtime's window.

6. What <fixed> and <trigger_id> mean on the FIFO

SCHEDULE_HOST_DOWNTIME and SCHEDULE_SVC_DOWNTIME carry the same <fixed> and <trigger_id> fields Nagios always used, and jaque now acts on both instead of rejecting anything but a fixed downtime:

• <fixed>=1, <trigger_id>=0 schedules a fixed downtime.
• <fixed>=0, <trigger_id>=0 schedules a flexible downtime; <duration> is read as a positive number of seconds.
• <fixed>=1, a nonzero <trigger_id> schedules a triggered downtime, with <trigger_id> as the downtime it triggers on; <duration> is still read off the line for its position but has no effect.
• <fixed>=0 together with a nonzero <trigger_id> is a parse error: a downtime cannot be both flexible and triggered.

See FIFO external commands for the full field list of every downtime verb.