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

Tue Mar 11 14:49:18 UTC 2014
Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com>

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:
>> //Hi,/
>>
>> /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.

- Toralf

>
>> What do you reckon is the best way of achieving this? I can think of
>> ways to get what I want via scripts/custom programs/cron jobs, but
>> perhaps there are "standard" solutions already? I'd like to avoid
>> re-inventing the wheel... I also know that there are various advanced
>> solutions for system resource monitoring out there - I've used Nagios in
>> the past - but it may seem like setting up something like that will be
>> an overkill in this case.
>>
>> So what's everyone's thoughts on this?
>>
> I would go with nagios, but I'm a bit biased that way.   if you decide
> to go that route and want more input, send me an offlist email (unless
> others feel this is on topic for the list?  it seems like it wanders
> out of scope to me, but I'm not trying to exclude people); I've got a
> nagios plugin script that I use for monitoring disk space use you can
> have if you'd like.   or at least you can have it once I bring my
> machine back back online.
>


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