Introduction

The Checkmk GUI can be customized easily by each user to fit the their personal needs. Here are some examples:

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It might be useful to define your own defaults for some of these settings , so a new user doesn't have to change everything on his own.

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Get the factory defaults from the original file, for example:

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# Default timestamp format to be used in multisite

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default_ts_format = 'mixed'

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Create a file below ~/local/share/check_mk/web/plugins/config and define your preferred default setting, for example:

# We prefer to se both, the absolute and the relative time

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default_ts_format = 'both'

After doing an "omd restart apache", you will find this setting in your GUI:

OMD[mysite]:

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~$ omd restart apache

Image Added

The views for which you already explicitly have set the Time stamp format , will not be changed , because the settings in your personal config files below ~/var/check_mk/web/<username> are overriding the default settings.

Example 2: Default Sidebar Snapins

In the case of the sidebar snapins, the file ~/lib/python3/cmk/gui/plugins/config/base.py doesn't help us , because the variable "sidebar" that is set there , seems to have a new data structure. You can find out this structure by explicitly configuring your sidebar in the GUI and then checking out the file ~/var/check_mk/web/<your_username>/sidebar.mk. The structure you find there , can be used in ~/local/share/check_mk/web/plugins/config/my_base.py:

# Newly create users should get these sidebar snapins:

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sidebar = [

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        {

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            'snapin_type_id': 'tactical_overview',

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            'visibility': 'open'

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        },

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        {

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            'snapin_type_id': 'bookmarks',

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            'visibility': 'open'

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        },

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        {

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            'snapin_type_id': 'views',

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            'visibility': 'closed'

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        },

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        {

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            'snapin_type_id': 'search',

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            'visibility': 'closed'

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        },

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        {

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            'snapin_type_id': 'time',

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            'visibility': 'closed'

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        }

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    ]

Recommendations

Sometimes its it's hard to work out the possible values of a setting. In that case, applying the setting in the GUI and then doing a "grep" in ~/var/check_mk/web might be helpful:

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OMD[mysite]:~$ grep -r ts_format ~/var/check_mk/web/

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/omd/sites/

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mysite/var/check_mk/web/cmkadmin/viewoptions.mk:{'svcproblems': {'ts_date': '%Y-%m-%d', 'ts_format': 'abs'}}

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