Campground Availability Monitor

About

Forked from umich-ulcs-monitor. This program monitors availability of Canyon Campground at Yellowstone National Park.

Getting Started

• Configure SENDER_EMAIL, SENDER_PASSWORD, RECEPIENT_EMAILS, and UPDATE_INTERVAL in monitor.py.

• Run the script

  $ python3 monitor.py

• To exit, press Ctrl+C.

  • If the process failed to exit properly, refer to this link.

Deployment on Virtual Machine

We can choose to deploy the program on a virtual machine. Popular service providers include Microsoft Azure Student and Amazon AWS Educate. Given the free credits for students, we can establish a virtual machine for free.

Using tmux to Keep Processes Running

We will use tmux to run the program so that it will continue running after the ssh session disconnects. Learn more about other approaches and a beginner guide to tmux.

• On your virtual machine, start tmux with a new session

  $ ssh azure
  $ tmux

• Run the program in the session

  $ python3 monitor.py

• Detach from the session by pressing C-b d, which means press Ctrl+b, release, and then press d. You will get the output

  [detached (from session 0)]
  

• Disconnect ssh as you want

  $ exit

• After reconnecting to ssh, attach to tmux session

  $ ssh azure
  $ tmux attach

  The program should still be running properly.

Acknowledgement

• Beautiful Soup
• tmux cheatsheet