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netbrain
Asked: 2015-12-22 00:39:38 +0800 CST

What is the absolutely simplest way of sending notification from a linux server?

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I have a server with smartmontools and I wish it sent med a notification/warning email whenever a disk fails.

For this i need to setup a email server on the machine. However this will be the only service that sends emails, is there something that is even simpler that will allow the server to send a notification? maybe some alternative to email?

Would be great it the for example were a free sms service, and instead of email i could have the daemon send me an sms.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

linux

3 Answers

  1. Yes you should consider sending out SMS'. You can use any of the several webbased SMS services. You will need to write a wrapper program than can be invoked by smartmontools for specific incidents. The wrapper program will then format the message and invoke pass it on to the webbased SMS service. Alternatively you can look at web based messaging like Me On Cloud (Disclosure : We use Me on Cloud)

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  2. I use e-mail as it is the simplest to set up and maintain. There are simple smtp servers like ssmtp. The hardest is not getting caught in spam filters, especially as it would be an infrequent alert. You could give the machine its own account and send with authenticated smtp to your e-mail provider, but then you have to manage a password. Depending on the provider it may be useful or even essential to place the sender in you address book. You might want to configure a daily mail (for example there's a program called logwatch that I think is default on RHEL)

    Another thing you can do is if your server has a public web server on it. There are loads of monitoring services out there, and many of them are free as long as you don't ask for too frequent testing. I'm sure you could configure one to check the presence or the date of a specific URL, and update that URL with the smartmon test. That would give you the additional benefit of also testing your web server at the same time. Most of those services will also offer to alert you by SMS, but finding one that will do so for free might be difficult.

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  3. SMS is rarely truly free, since it goes through the Operator's SMSC. EMail is still a good option, but you need to get the email client to authenticate with your email service provider (either through a password, or a fixed ip - How to whitelist an IP). A totally different option is OTT-based messaging like Cloud Alert, which is free and includes a command line utility, but requires you to install an app. (Disclosure: I work for Cloud Alert)

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