[CentOS] Disk space warning ("gdu-notification-daemon" type) for remote systems

Wed Mar 12 14:07:45 UTC 2014
Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com>

On 12/03/14 13:56, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 4:07 AM, Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com> wrote:
>>>> In general, that might make sense, but please consider the fact that I'm
>>>> not talking about a "general" server system. It's a machine dedicated to
>>>> running a "server" component on one specific software package, and will
>>>> only ever be contacted by a handful of "display" machines running a GUI
>>>> component of the same piece of software.
>>> Then you need to look at the features of the specific GUI and its
>>> transport to the server to see what options it provides for popup
>>> messages.
>> I can easily add a check to software itself. But like I said, I want to
>> avoid re-inventing the wheel. So if there is something built into the
>> system that will do the job for me...
> I don't think you provided enough information for anyone to help.
> What kind of remote gui are you using?

I wouldn't actually call it a "remote gui" - there is just an 
application that communicates with a server process on a remote host, 
via a custom protocol. This application has a "local" GUI. The remote 
host is headless, although the machine typically has X, so you could run 
processes on it with remote display.

I actually thought most if this would be clear from how I described the 
system initially.

>     If it is a full remote X
> desktop session (freenx/x2go or native network) you could run anything
> you could run locally at the console because it is in fact running on
> the server side.  If you are running X locally on the display machine,
> you can still run anything you want on the server machine with its
> window open on the display desktop.
Obviously. But like I said, I was wondering if there was a "more 
automatic" way directly supported by the distro. Like, maybe you could 
somehow configure "gdu-notification-daemon" so that it would

 1. Start automatically independently of logins.
 2. Redirect notifications to a different system.

>>>       Personally, I'd still recommend something more general
>>> that would generate email or text message alerts to the right set of
>>> people.  It is fairly rare for 'users' to be interested in fixing
>>> system problems and even if that happens to be the case now for this
>>> particular box it may not always be.
>> Trust me, this is a highly customised setup with very special users, and
>> this won't change just like that.
>>
>> A more general system is not an entirely bad idea, but I think it would
>> only make sense if implemented at a larger scale based on a system-wide
>> policy (there is much else going on in the same network.) Which I'm not
>> sure will happen right now...
> I think it makes sense because there are already frameworks that are
> relatively easy to install and set up even if you initially only
> target one host and test - and you can get things like CPU and network
> bandwidth tracking for free.
Maybe.

However, I should perhaps also add that anything based on notification 
based on e-mail or similar services might lead to problems in that the 
systems don't normally deliver or receive e-mails.

>    Then if you want, you can expand the
> monitoring to other things you are likely to need, but even if you
> don't it is probably easier than building your own notification
> system.    It's probably not the easiest thing to start with, but
> OpenNMS is pretty flexible.  For example if you have an xmpp system
> with clients for instant messaging, it can send alerts to a group
> conference so the interested people see it without cluttering email.
Hmm... Not sure if xmpp would be any better than email...

- Toralf


>


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