Aranealarm

An exercise in basic network monitoring (aranea is "spider[web]" in Latin) and TUI, this cross-platform Python script pings IP nodes periodically in parallel and displays response time, connection status, some other statistics, and recent history. If all nodes respond to ping, then quiet background music plays. If at least one node becomes disconnected, then music pauses, loud synthesized voice speaks alarm messages, and part of the screen blinks, drawing attention of someone dozing on duty (are you?) until all nodes respond to ping again. When latitude and longitude of nodes and places are given, they are shown on 2D map. Results of each pass are kept in the log, which can be viewed and saved into a file. Collatz conjecture is being verified in the background. Configuration is done by means of JSONs.

Requirements

Python 3.6+ with pyttsx3 (voice synth), pygame (music playback), and, on Windows, windows-curses (support for curses TUI). After Python and pip have been installed, those modules can be obtained by

$ pip[3] install -U pyttsx3
$ pip[3] install -U pygame

> pip install -U windows-curses

In case of a network disconnected from Internet, that is, where Internet is restricted or downright prohibited, prepared beforehand platform-specific Python installer and wheel files should suffice. With dependencies of the ones above, for instance, on Windows, these wheels are

• comtypes

• pip

• pygame

• pypiwin32

• pyttsx3

• pywin32

• setuptools

• windows_curses

Having downloaded pyttsx3-2.90-py3-none-any.whl and the rest with > pip download pyttsx3 (or

$ pip[3] download --no-deps --platform win32 --python-version 3.8 windows-curses

for environment different from where you run pip) where Internet is present, bring them to the monitoring computer, install Python with pip, and do > pip install pyttsx3-2.90-py3-none-any.whl etc., following the dependency order.

Usage

List IP nodes that you want to monitor in ip_nodes_near.json, ip_nodes_far.json etc.; places that you want to see on map in towns.json, forests.json etc. List these JSONs in aranealarm.json along with path to the dir with audio files to be played as background music, path to locale JSON, and few other options.

See aranealarm.json, ip_nodes_pass.json and ip_nodes_fail.json, places.json, locale_ukr.json for an example.

Then

$ python[3] aranealarm.py

You should see something like this:

Control keys are described at the bottom, use them to e.g. switch from lat-lon map to log of recent passes or add interval between alarm voice messages.

Of course, being a diagnostic tool, Aranealarm only informs you about connection issues and cannot amend them; that is up to something or someone else.

Binaries

Alternatively, get from Releases the binary suitable for your OS, copy it to the dir with configuration files mentioned in Usage, and run it.

In this case, on the one hand, you probably avoid troubles from Requirements, but on the other, you cannot modify the script accordingly to your needs.

Binaries were generated by PyInstaller.

Cross-platformity

• On Linux:

• On Windows:

Extensibility

We consider Aranealarm simple enough so that anyone can add whatever functionality they think it lacks, for instance, checking nodes other than IP ones. Or perhaps they better see

Sorores et Fratres

There are many, many such programs, most of them are orders of magnitude more sophisticated than this ping-wrapping, wheel-inventing script.

License

Aranealarm is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Aranealarm is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with Aranealarm. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.