CTG File Documentation
Summary
A .ctg file named by the SITE identity is a BMC Software PATROL file: a catalog used by BMC PATROL, an enterprise IT-monitoring product. The best-known example is StdEvent.ctg, PATROL’s Standard Event Catalog, which holds the event-class definitions its Knowledge Modules raise. It is an application-internal data file, not a document you view, and it is read by the PATROL Agent rather than opened by hand. Note that .ctg is ambiguous: on a camera memory card it is instead a Canon photo catalog file.
Technical details
| Feature | Value |
|---|---|
| Full name (SITE identity) | BMC Software PATROL file |
| File extension | .ctg |
| MIME type | application/octet-stream |
| Format type | Application-internal catalog file (PATROL event catalog) |
| Best-known instance | StdEvent.ctg — PATROL Standard Event Catalog |
| Contains | Event-class definitions used by PATROL Knowledge Modules (KMs) |
| Developer | BMC Software (PATROL; now part of BMC Helix Operations Management) |
| Read by | The PATROL Agent / PATROL Console, not an end-user viewer |
| Open standard | No (proprietary to the PATROL product) |
| Published signature | None documented; identify by product context and filename |
| Related PATROL files | KM files (.km), PSL scripts |
Also uses .ctg | Canon digital-camera catalog (in the hidden CANONMSC folder); ChessBase opening book |
| Reference | BMC — Developing a PATROL Knowledge Module |
What is a CTG file?
Under the identity this page uses, a .ctg file is a BMC Software PATROL file: a catalog belonging to BMC PATROL, a long-running enterprise product for monitoring servers, databases and applications. The specific, documented example is StdEvent.ctg, the PATROL Standard Event Catalog. It is the repository of event-class definitions available to the core PATROL product — the templates for the events (warnings, alarms, state changes) that PATROL raises about the things it watches. The file is read by PATROL’s own components; it is not a document a person opens in a viewer.
Before going further it is worth being clear about the extension, because .ctg is genuinely overloaded. If your .ctg came off a camera memory card, it is almost certainly not a PATROL file at all: Canon cameras write small .ctg catalog files into a hidden CANONMSC folder to index the photos in DCIM, and .ctg is also used by ChessBase for opening books. This article describes the BMC PATROL meaning named by the site; the camera and chess meanings are unrelated formats that happen to share three letters.
PATROL, Knowledge Modules and where the catalog fits
PATROL monitors an environment through Knowledge Modules (KMs). A KM is a set of instructions the PATROL Agent runs: it tells the agent how to discover application instances (a database, a web server, a filesystem), what parameters to sample on them, what thresholds matter, and what to do when something crosses a threshold. When a monitored condition occurs, the agent generates an event, and every event is an instance of a defined event class.
Those event-class definitions have to live somewhere the product can look them up, and that is the role of the event catalog. The StdEvent.ctg catalog is the standard set that ships with the core product; it resides in a fixed location on each platform PATROL supports and is consulted whenever an event is raised or interpreted. A KM effectively references event classes from the catalog rather than redefining them, so the catalog is shared infrastructure across the KMs an agent loads.
What an event catalog holds
A PATROL event catalog is a store of event-class definitions. Each class describes a kind of event PATROL can emit: an identifier and type, a severity, and the descriptive and formatting information the console uses to present the event and route it to operators or to an external event manager. In deployments that forward PATROL events to a central console (for example through an integration adapter), those downstream systems read the same catalog so that an event arriving from an agent can be matched back to its class and rendered consistently. In other words, the catalog is the shared vocabulary of events, and the .ctg file is how that vocabulary is packaged for the product to load.
Opening, editing and handling the file
There is no consumer application that “opens” a PATROL .ctg, and no published file-format specification or documented magic number for it: it is application-internal data whose layout is defined by, and meaningful only to, the PATROL product. You do not identify it by inspecting leading bytes (there is no reliable signature); you identify it by where it came from — a BMC PATROL installation directory — and by its filename, typically StdEvent.ctg. Catalogs are maintained through PATROL’s own developer tooling as part of building or extending a Knowledge Module, not by hand-editing the binary. If you have encountered one outside that context, the practical conclusion is usually that it belongs to an installed monitoring product and should be left in place, or that the file is actually one of the other .ctg meanings.
Telling the PATROL file apart from the other CTG formats
Because the extension is shared, the reliable test is provenance, not content:
| Where the file is | What it almost certainly is |
|---|---|
A BMC PATROL install directory (e.g. named StdEvent.ctg) | PATROL event catalog (this article) |
A hidden CANONMSC folder on a camera card, beside a DCIM folder | Canon camera catalog/index (not a photo; leave it on the card) |
A ChessBase data folder, paired with .ctb/.cto files | ChessBase opening book |
If the .ctg sits next to your JPEGs and RAW files on an SD card, it is the Canon index, and your pictures are the files in DCIM — there is nothing in the .ctg itself to view.
FAQ
How do I open a BMC PATROL .ctg file?
You do not open it directly. It is an internal catalog the PATROL product reads at runtime; there is no viewer for it and no public format. It is created and maintained through PATROL’s own Knowledge Module tooling. If you found it inside a PATROL installation, leave it there — it is part of the product’s configuration.
What is StdEvent.ctg specifically?
It is the PATROL Standard Event Catalog: the repository of event-class definitions available to the core PATROL product, held in a fixed directory on each supported platform. PATROL and any integrated console read it so that events raised by Knowledge Modules can be matched to their class and presented consistently.
My .ctg came from a camera card, not a server — is this the right page?
Probably not. A .ctg in a hidden CANONMSC folder is a Canon camera catalog/index, not a BMC PATROL file. It contains no photo — your images are the JPG/CR2/CR3 files in DCIM — and you can ignore it on a computer copy, though you should not delete it on the card itself.
References
- BMC — Developing a PATROL Knowledge Module
- NetIQ — BMC PATROL adapter and integration guide (event catalog)
- FileInfo — CTG file extension (multiple meanings)
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