Server monitoring with email alerts

[remus]

Hi all,

The tinycore based samba server is up and running for two weeks now, and is working well.
I've tested a few different combinations of tinycore and samba and have come up with the following stable recipie.

Tinycore v 3.8.4
Samba v 3.4.5

I'm storing my tce folder on a small partition I created as our community centre does not have enough usb flash drives to spare.

Bit of forum searching uncovered the tce-setdrive command, which allowed me to set the tce folder without the gui

I am going on a trip with the church in April to a hospital they are setting up in the solomon islands and am considering installing tinycore+samba as a file server for them. Does anyone know if there is a tc extension that sends regular system status via email ? I've found nagios with google, and it looks ok, if there is nothing already available, i'll make it into an extension. They have internet via satellite at the site.

[Rich]

Hi remus
Depending on what you are trying to do, you might be able  to set up a script to gather the information you wish
to monitor. Use  cron  to run it once a day, and possibly  alpine  to send an email.

[remus]

Hi Rich,
I guess I could do it with shell scripts.

I have a bit of learning to do here.
- enabling emailing in tinycore
- gathering system status, samba logs, hard drive health status
- emailing it out of tinycore

Hmm looks achievable.

Whats the best approach to gathering system satus information, and putting it into an email ?

[Rich]

Hi remus
It depends on what kind of data you wish to gather. In general, the script would start by creating a temporary
work directory.
1. mkdir workdirectory
2. Copy any required log files to it.  (Samba, dmesg > filename, syslog, etc.)
3. Use the hdparm utility for drive information   (hdparm [switches] > filename)
4. Use ifconfig > filename  to check for excessive network errors
5. tar zcf workdirectory.tar.gz workdirectory   (assumes you are just above workdirectory when executed)

That should give you a starting point. Sorry, I don't have any experience with automating emails, maybe
someone else will offer some advice.

[bmarkus]

Try logwatch http://sourceforge.net/projects/logwatch/

Unfortunately it is not in the repo but it is written in Perl, so no need to compile.

[remus]

Thanks for the Logwatch link, I'll check it out tonight.

Heres another tool that looks interesting: http://mmonit.com/monit/
I've started the build process and ran into problem's, I'll post some of the error messages when i get home tonight.

[remus]

I got a bunch of odd make errors when I tried to build monit, sorry but I'll post proper examples when I get home, it had something to do with   PAM   is that a part of an existing extension ?

[Rich]

Hi remus
There is the  Linux-PAM.tcz  extension as well as the  dev  version.

[remus]

How did you find that Rich ?
I searched for pam and PAM with ab with no luck.
I just now tried with the wild card *PAM and *pam but that did not work. Experimented with wild cards and they do seem to work

In the past I've browsed the repository here : http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/4.x/x86/tcz/ but that takes a bit of bandwidth to load.

[Rich]

Hi remus
In this case I used the provides function to search for pam. That function searches for a match anywhere in the files list.
Just be aware that this type of search can return many other extensions as well.

[remus]

Can you give me an example ?

I've googled "Linux provides function" which returns a staggering amount of hits about how great linux is but nothing about how to search through the repository file list.

[gerald_clark]

Linux does not have a provides function.
Perhaps your time would be better spent reading the wiki and searching the fora.

[Rich]

Hi remus
Sorry, I left out the part  about opening AppBrowser, and then changing the search button to  Provides.

[remus]

Thanks Rich.

[vinnie]

OT:  In a little we will have the tag and this should not happen again!