The Watchtower

Distribution Updated - 1/3/2000 - Adds "Network Check" function, allowing the Watchtower to check trusted network devices (router, switch, DNS server, etc) to make sure the network is okay before sending out a slew of pages. Also fixes a very minor Year 2000 error, causing it to report the date as the year "100" on the status board and in the logs.

The Watchtower is a comprehensive server monitoring and notification system, designed to notify system administrators in the event of a system failure. It can notify via email, alphanumeric page, or through an HTML status board.

Requirements

• Unix server or workstation
• Perl 5.004
• Net::DNS module
• Net::Ping module
• Email Pager gateway (for pager based notification)
• HTML directory accessible to the unix workstation (For HTML status board - this could be on the same machine, or exported via SMB or NFS)

Features

• Overall IP Status monitoring
• Individual TCP port monitoring
• IPX monitoring
• Notification occurs when the server's state changes. You'll get a page if the machine goes down, and when it comes back up. You won't get a page every five minutes because the machine is still down.

Status

The first extremely alpha distribution is ready. The documentation stinks, and it's probably got a lot of UNH specific stuff hiding in it, but give it a try:

• Download: watchtower.tar.gz.
• Installation instructions: install.txt.
• Pager Gateway. Only works for Mobilecomm pagers. It takes an email, and connects to mobilecomm's web gateway. It's a hack, but it works okay. You might be able to modify it to work for other pager companies. Set up a sendmail alias as follows:
  pageuser: "| /usr/local/page/sendpage.pl pagerid"