Plugin: Server alert

Send a SMS whenever your service (eg. Web server, Mail server, Internet connection) is down. This tool uses fsockopen function to scan running service port.

Note: Make sure your firewall doesn't block the port scan

IMPORTANT: You need php-cli (http://www.php-cli.com/) to use this plugin.

Field description

Alert Name 		: 	The name for your alert, it can be anything
Host 			: 	Hostname/IP address of your server (it can be local or remote)
Service Port 	: 	The number of running service port, eq: 80 for webserver, 25 for smtp/mail, etc.
Connect Timeout : 	The connection timeout, in seconds.
Phone Number	: 	Recipient of the alert message
Respond Message	:	The alert message
Status			:	Alert status (false if the alert get the service is down)

Example

You want to know if your internet connection is down. Off course the computer running Kalkun must be able to connect to the internet first. For example you define www.google.com as a Host to test the internet connection. It's better to define the closest Host from you to the internet to reduce latency.

Next, run the daemon, it uses cron (it's run on *nix environment) to execute the script in every certain time. Before that, config application/plugins/server_alert/daemon_engine.php first. Change $uri value to your kalkun-uri.

For example to run the script every minute launch:

crontab -e

Edit as such

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/kalkun/application/plugins/server_alert/daemon_engine.php

• /usr/bin/php is your php-cli program, change it if you use other path.
• /var/www/html/kalkun is the location of your kalkun source.

More about cron : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CronHowto

IMPORTANT

If you have many alerts, determining cron time interval is critical, this is to avoid other instances execute before current instance finishes execution. To determine cron time interval, you can find it at the bottom of plugin dashboard in Kalkun. It shows the total time interval for your alert in seconds.

For example, if it reports 600 seconds. It's same as 5 minutes. Then your cron is like this:

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/kalkun/application/plugins/server_alert/daemon_engine.php

Next, if the alert gets that the service is down, the alert status becomes false. This is to avoid send the alert SMS repeatedly. To enable it again, go to Plugin -> Server Alert, there is Release state button to renable the alert.

Note : MS Windows user might want to try cron for Windows (http://cronw.sourceforge.net/)