Indeterminate alarms are raised for a server condition for which a severity cannot be determined. In most cases these alarms are benign and do not issue alerts nor appear in the output of the status tool or Administrative Console by default. These alarms are usually caused by an enabled gauge that is intended to measure an aspect of the server that is not currently enabled. For example, gauges intended to monitor metrics related to replication may produce indeterminate alarms if a Directory Server is not currently replicating data. The gauge can be disabled if needed.

For more information about indeterminate alarms, view the gauge's associated monitor entry. There may be messages that can help determine the issue. The following is sample output from the status tool run with the —alarmSeverity=indeterminate option:
                        --- Alarms ---
Severity     : Severity Start : Condition      : Resource   : Details
             : Time           :                :            :
-------------:----------------:----------------:------------:------------------------
Normal       : 26/Aug/2014    : Startup Begun  : cn=config  : The Directory Server
             : 14:16:29 -0500 :                :            : is starting.
             :                :                :            :
Indeterminate: 26/Aug/2014    : Replication    : not        : The value of gauge
             : 14:16:40 -0500 : Latency        : available  : Replication Latency
             :                : (Milliseconds) :            : (Milliseconds) could not
             :                :                :            : be determined. The
             :                :                :            : severity is INDETERMINATE,
             :                :                :            : having assumed this
             :                :                :            : severity Tue Aug 26
             :                :                :            : 14:17:10 CDT 2014.
The following is an indeterminate alarm for the Replication Latency (Milliseconds) gauge. The following is a sample search of the monitor backend for this gauge’s entry. The result is an error message may explain the indeterminate severity:
# ldapsearch -w password --baseDN "cn=monitor"  \
-D"cn=directory manager" gauge-name="Replication Latency (Milliseconds)"

dn: cn=Gauge Replication Latency (Milliseconds),cn=monitor
objectClass: top
objectClass: ds-monitor-entry
objectClass: ds-numeric-gauge-monitor-entry
objectClass: ds-gauge-monitor-entry
objectClass: extensibleObject
cn:          Gauge Replication Latency (Milliseconds)
gauge-name:  Replication Latency (Milliseconds)
resource:
severity:    indeterminate
summary:     The value of gauge Replication Latency (Milliseconds) could not
             be determined. The severity is INDETERMINATE, having assumed
             this severity Tue Aug 26 15:42:40 CDT 2014
error-message: No entries were found under cn=monitor having object
               class ds-replica-monitor-entry
              …