[Xymon] State of the art SMS alerting?

[Henrik Størner]

Den 08-01-2014 01:59, John Thurston skrev:
> Can anyone shed light on the current 'state of the art' for alerting by
> SMS from Xymon? Are there recommended usb-modem/software combinations to
> achieve this?
>
> I'd like to have the option of sending alerts from my Xymon server
> without relying on email->SMS gateways. (When I need to announce that
> the mail queue has reached critical, it seems foolish to try to dispatch
> that alert by mail.)
>
> I'm running Xymon on Solaris which will ultimately limit my options, but
> I'm interested in any information you have to share.

If you're ok with relying on an external service, then the easiest is 
probably to talk to your phone company and ask if they have a webservice 
interface for sending an SMS. Then you can fire them off with a simple 
script using "curl" or a similar tool.

If you prefer doing something locally, then a USB modem works ok - most 
of the time. I have had some problems with a type of Huawei modems that 
would go into a low-power (i.e. non-responding) mode from time to time; 
on Linux they could be revived by unloading and reloading the USB driver 
modules. So I had to check if messages had been queued for "too long" 
and then reset the modem if necessary.

There is software available for managing most types of cell modems. I 
personally use the "smstools" package http://smstools3.kekekasvi.com/ . 
Sending an SMS with this tool means creating a text file in the 
"outbound" directory, which is simple enough to do from a Xymon alert 
script. I also made a simple webpage so I can send an sms without having 
to muddle with the tiny keyboard on my phone :-)


Regards,
Henrik