[Sussex] musing about what I'd really like...

[Pybe]

Typically, this sort of thing is done using software like nagios and the like, wich will drop you an email if there is an issue.

Personally I wouldn't want something talking to me everytime there is ping loss for a server I am dealing with.

Sounds like a fun project though. A simple way would be to use something like nagios and just have a device that would alert and or read out loud the emails as they come in......

Have fun

--------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: Nic James Ferrier <nferrier at tapsellferrier.co.uk>

Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:26:37 
To:"Sussex Linux User Group" <sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk>
Subject: [Sussex] musing about what I'd really like...


This is a work avoidance email.


I've been experiencing intermittant network access over the last few
days.

I'm told this is because I'm more than 2 miles from the exchange and
that ADSL is affected by the weather.

Anyway... every now and then I have to kick off a ping to a well known
host on the Internet to make sure things are still working.

This is something a lot of us do for a lot of different reasons I'd
guess. Right now I'm doing it because my personal net connectivity is
not good. But I also have periods where I'm pinging servers I am
managing or HTTP/app pinging services I am running.

I can do all this from my laptop but I think I'd like a non-my current
workstation solution so that I don't have to be distracted from my
work by ping reports and all that.

I guess what I'm saying is I want something like the nabaztag rabbit:

  http://www.digitalera.co.uk/gadgets/nabaztag-wifi-rabbit/

but clearly without the rabbit gimmick.


In terms of software I think it's pretty simple, I want to specify a
host or a number of hosts and I want to specify a level to ping it at:

- ICMP
- TCP (socket open?)
- HTTP GET 
- HTTP GET + look for some value in response

which seems pretty simple. There would have to be some quite tricky
bits about how much to increase sampling when something started to
fail.



What happens when the status fails is what's interesting. I guess the
easiest way to do it is to associate a sound with a rule. Maybe there
should be a trigger point at which the sound starts to get more
urgent. Or maybe a voice should say something.


In terms of hardware... I've been wondering whether some sort of
handheld that could run linux would be any good for this. 

What I'd really like is a device with built in powerline but a WIFI
device would be ok (and if it loses access to the network it would
have to hum or go orange or something). It would obviously have to
play sound as well.

I wonder if I could find a cheap handheld PC type thing (an IPAQ?) and
experiment. 

What do other people think? Is this the sort of thing that might be
useful?


-- 
Nic Ferrier
http://www.tapsellferrier.co.uk   

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