CentOS - Mar 2014 - Disk space warning ("gdu-notification-daemon" type) for remote systems

//Hi,/

/I need to implement a system of disk space checks and warnings for a 
client-server setup running CentOS 6. Simply put, I just want a warning 
popup rather like the ones given by gdu-notification-daemon when server 
file system is full or nearly full, but they should appear on the client 
display(s) rather than locally, and must also work when nobody is logged 
directly in to the (server) system.

What do you reckon is the best way of achieving this? I can think of 
ways to get what I want via scripts/custom programs/cron jobs, but 
perhaps there are "standard" solutions already? I'd like to avoid 
re-inventing the wheel... I also know that there are various advanced 
solutions for system resource monitoring out there - I've used Nagios in 
the past - but it may seem like setting up something like that will be 
an overkill in this case.

So what's everyone's thoughts on this?


- Toralf



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On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 8:38 AM, Toralf Lund <toralf.lund at pgs.com>
wrote:
> //Hi,/
>
> /I need to implement a system of disk space checks and warnings for a
> client-server setup running CentOS 6. Simply put, I just want a warning
> popup rather like the ones given by gdu-notification-daemon when server
> file system is full or nearly full, but they should appear on the client
> display(s) rather than locally, and must also work when nobody is logged
> directly in to the (server) system.
it sounds like you think you want to send popup windows across from
one system to many remote machines.   this seems like a path of
madness to me; full of potential problems like x windows security, or
if you write your own little daemon to accept messages and display a
box, misuse/abuse from playful users.    I think you should build a
monitoring system (nagios, xymon, opennms, several others or perhaps
your own if you're feeling far too adventurous) instead.  right now
all you care about is disk space, but eventually someone will want to
also check for certain processes, open ports, logfile entries,
something and you could spend the time now to put in the hooks for
more advanced things and get people in the habit of checking a
monitoring system on a regular basis.
>
> What do you reckon is the best way of achieving this? I can think of
> ways to get what I want via scripts/custom programs/cron jobs, but
> perhaps there are "standard" solutions already? I'd like to
avoid
> re-inventing the wheel... I also know that there are various advanced
> solutions for system resource monitoring out there - I've used Nagios
in
> the past - but it may seem like setting up something like that will be
> an overkill in this case.
>
> So what's everyone's thoughts on this?
>
I would go with nagios, but I'm a bit biased that way.   if you decide
to go that route and want more input, send me an offlist email (unless
others feel this is on topic for the list?  it seems like it wanders
out of scope to me, but I'm not trying to exclude people); I've got a
nagios plugin script that I use for monitoring disk space use you can
have if you'd like.   or at least you can have it once I bring my
machine back back online.

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