SNMP Monitoring and Alerting

Continued from page: 1

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Sending SMS alerts

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We have talked about sending e-mail alerts in case of problems in the network. But, you may not get any alerts if the network infrastructure is down or if the e-mail server is not working. So, you should also send alerts using an alternative way. And, the best way is to send alerts using SMS. 

For that you'll need a cellphone, a cable to connect it to the monitoring host and a software that will let you send SMS through the system using the cellphone. We used a software called Gnokii (on this month's PCQXtreme CD) and integrated it with Nagios to send SMS alerts. Here we will show you how to do that. First, install the RPM by running the command.

#rpm -ivh gnokii-0.5.8-1.i386.rpm

This will install the required binaries and configuration files. Open the configuration file /etc/ gnokiirc in any text editor. You'll have to make two changes in this file. First is the port to which your cellphone cable is connected. If you are using a serial port cable then make an entry like this

port = /dev/ttys0

Or if you are using a USB cable make an entry like this.

port = /dev/usb/ttyUSB0

The next change that you have to make is for the model of your cellphone. Before doing that check if your cellphone model is listed in the supported models list on the gnokii website (www.gnokii.org). If it is supported then add a line in the file

model = 6110

This configures the software for a Nokia 6610 cellphone connected via a USB cable to our management host. If instead of the RPM you get a tarball of the Gnokii software, then compile the binaries from the source and place them in the location as specified in the readme file. 

Also there is a sample configuration file with it, which you can customize. Now that the gnokii program is configured, you will need to integrate it with Nagios. Open the file /usr/local/nagios/etc/misccommands.cfg and change the entries for the command notify-by-epager to look like:

define command{
command_name notify-by-epager
command_line /usr/bin/printf “%b” “Service: $SERVICEDESC$\nHost: $HOSTNAME$\nState: $SERVICESTATE$\nDate: $DATETIME$” | /usr/bin/gnokii -sendsms $CONTACTPAGER$
}

Also make the host-notify-by-epager command look like the above command.

After this open your /usr/local/nagios/etc/contacts.cfg file and enter the mobile numbers in the pager option for the contacts defined in the file. The contact definition should look something like this.

define contact{
contact_name nagiosadmin
..
..
..
service_notification_commands notify-by-email,notify-by-epager
host_notification_commands host-notify-by-email,host-notify-by-epager
email admin@cmil.com
pager 9811xxxxxx
}

Now force the Nagios process to relaod the changes made to the configuration files.

#service nagios reload

After this Nagios will alert you of network problems via both e-mail and SMS.

Not only Nagios, the Gnokii program can be integrated with other program as well. For example, in for sending SNMP traps, instead of using the traptoemail script to send e-mail alerts, you can specify in the snmptrapd.conf file that the Gnokii program be used to send SMS alerts.

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SolarWinds: AN SNMP based nms 

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