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

[m.roth at 5-cent.us]

Toralf Lund wrote:
> On 11/03/14 14:17, zGreenfelder wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> /I need to implement a system of disk space checks and warnings for a
>>> client-server setup running CentOS 6. Simply put, I just want a warning
>>> popup rather like the ones given by gdu-notification-daemon when server
>>> file system is full or nearly full, but they should appear on the
>>> client display(s) rather than locally, and must also work when nobody is
>>> logged directly in to the (server) system.
>> it sounds like you think you want to send popup windows across from
>> one system to many remote machines.   this seems like a path of
>> madness to me; full of potential problems like x windows security, or
>> if you write your own little daemon to accept messages and display a
>> box, misuse/abuse from playful users.
> Not really worried by those things in this context.
>
> The setup is only physically accessible to a very limited group of
> trusted users, and access to or from the outside world is restricted by
> all sorts of firewalls etc, and also only available via a very slow and
> unreliable link...
>
>>      I think you should build a
>> monitoring system (nagios, xymon, opennms, several others or perhaps
>> your own if you're feeling far too adventurous) instead.  right now
>> all you care about is disk space, but eventually someone will want to
>> also check for certain processes, open ports, logfile entries,
>> something and you could spend the time now to put in the hooks for
>> more advanced things and get people in the habit of checking a
>> monitoring system on a regular basis.
> 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.
<snip>
In general, I agree with the other posters. What may only have very
limited accessibility *now* doesn't say anything about next week, or the
next manager who comes in's intent.

But to directly answer your question, here's a thought: does the software
you're running have the ability to do pop-ups? If so, can you get a
message to it - a d/b entry, or a file that it can read? If so, have it do
the alert.

        mark