State of the art SMS alerting? 🔗 link

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.
-- 
    Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston    XXX-XXX-XXXX
user-ce4d79d99bab@xymon.invalid
Enterprise Technology Services
Department of Administration
State of Alaska

We used to have an old nokia phone and used a script driving the gnokii linux driver and a serial cable. There were a number of issues with this approach:

- the phone kept filling up with reply SMSs (we also used it for general business SMS)
- the power supply would become unplugged or the phone would be powered off, serial cable unplugged, etc
- queue handling was an issue as the local MTA hands the message over to the sms script

It has been much more reliable using an external SMS service. We have two separate MTAs on two separate uplinks. I monitor both links for successful comms, if the primary goes down, I change the local mail server to point to the other MTA. I also monitor the queue lengths on all MTAs, so we are notified well before they get too full.

I believe one can send SMSs to an android phone via a USB cable but after a quick look didn't find any useful programs. Probably looking in the wrong place.

cheers, Phil

From: Xymon on behalf of John Thurston
Sent: Wednesday, 8 January 2014 11:29 AM
To: xymon at xymon.com
Subject: [Xymon] State of the art SMS alerting?

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.
--
    Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston    XXX-XXX-XXXX
user-ce4d79d99bab@xymon.invalid
Enterprise Technology Services
Department of Administration
State of Alaska

You can get cell modems in a USB thumb drive format.  They also used to be
available as PCMCIA cards, and one of those could be plugged into a regular
PC using a carrier that plugs into a PCI slot.  I believe either type
appears in the system to be a Hayes-type modem, which gives you the ability
to dial out.  I wouldn't be surprised to find the command set extended to
SMS messaging.

Here's a selection of cellular modems in mini-PCI express format:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4566-3004_7-0.html?filter=500284_14401104

I know this type would fit in my laptop.  I don't know if desktop
motherboards have suitable slots these days.  In either case, I imagine an
external antenna would be desirable.

I don't have one, so that's as much as I know.

Ralph Mitchell

On Tue, Jan 7, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Phil Crooker <user-e8e31cd73303@xymon.invalid>wrote:

On Tuesday 07 January 2014 15:59:57 John Thurston wrote:

We use a SMS box (I know it's from Siemens but I don't have the correct model number) connected to a laptop with a serial cable.
On the laptop I have written a http frontend that accepts a number and the sms text.  It does an insert in a mysql table.  This is picked up by smsd and the sms is send.  When done, it's reported back via the http site.
Works flawless.

I have 2 of these so the script on the xymon server can switch over to an other sms gateway if one fails.
It also has a mail 2 sms gateway implemented.  Mail to a sms domain (sms.intra) is forwarded to this box.  Via procmail the sms is inserted in the same mysql database.


Stef

Here we use an old Hayes-alike modem on our Slackware Linux box.

It's plugged into our UPS and sitting in our racks (thus avoiding problems with power cables going walkies).

The alerts are sent by a script, which calls "sms_client", which uses "TAP"[1] to talk down a POTS line to the (in our case Vodafone) service provider (thus avoiding issues with phone reception, and also avoiding issues with not being able to send email to a mail-to-SMS gateway).

http://howto.gumph.org/content/send-sms-messages-from-linux/

The link in there is broken, but you can get the source code from here: http://fossies.org/linux/misc/old/sms_client-2.0.8y.tar.gz/

There's what is apparently a near-definitive list of TAP Dialup Numbers here: http://avtech.com/Support/TAP/index.htm

Hope this information is of use.

Regards,

Carl

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telelocator_Alphanumeric_Protocol


 Carl Inglis
Systems Administrator

Rakon UK Limited
Dowsett House, Sadler Road, Lincoln LN6 3RS, United Kingdom
Tel: +XX XXXX XXXXXX | Fax: +XX XXXX XXXXXX | Mob: +44 7786 552915
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-----Original Message-----
From: Xymon [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of John Thurston
Sent: 08 January 2014 01:00
To: xymon at xymon.com
Subject: [Xymon] State of the art SMS alerting?

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.
--
    Do things because you should, not just because you can.

John Thurston    XXX-XXX-XXXX
user-ce4d79d99bab@xymon.invalid
Enterprise Technology Services
Department of Administration
State of Alaska

Den 08-01-2014 01:59, John Thurston skrev:

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

On 1/7/2014 at 7:59 PM, in message <user-a938bbcddc1e@xymon.invalid>,

John Thurston

<user-ce4d79d99bab@xymon.invalid> wrote:

We have been running this package for several years:
http://smstools3.kekekasvi.com/

Connected to a MultiTech GSM modem:
http://www.multitech.com/en_US/products/families/multimodemgprs/

I cannot remember the exact model of modem we have, but it connects via
serial port and works very well. Sending SMS messages is not
particularly speedy (about 2 seconds for each message), but it works
fairly well.

Good luck!

-- 
 
Jon Dustin - Network Specialist
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME  XXX-XXX-XXXX

There's SmushBox: smushmobile.com

Easier to find technical info here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smush/smart-sms-texting-for-everyone-the-smushbox

Connect via ethernet, handles queueing, web interface for configuration,
access controls, etc.  But $400 is a big investment.  I've never used one,
but they sound kind-of neat.

In the past, I've used Gnokii, with an old Nokia phone connected via cable
to a serial port.  Due to the lack of queue management, I wrote a script to
interface Postfix with Gnokii, so that Postfix handles all the queueing.
 Script details here: http://tools.rebel-it.com.au/sms-transport/

Also, have used sms_client (mentioned by others) with a modem talking to
Vodafone (Australia) via TAP.  Also used an MTA for its queueing features.
 This was a long time ago, and I'm a bit surprised that TAP services still
exist.

IMHO, Gnokii+Postfix is probably the best option, perhaps with a 3G modem,
as described here:

http://wiki.gnokii.org/index.php/ZTEUSBModem

Because it's USB, it doesn't require a separate power supply.  So no
worries about someone kicking the power cord out and draining the battery.

But most telcos provide a web interface, and if you're not paranoid about
losing Internet connectivity, this is a good option that requires no
specialist hardware and corresponding software/drive maintenance.

If you're super-paranoid about your paging solution failing and hence not
getting an alert about it, you can get a pair of smart 3G modems that can
be configured to probe each other via SMS, and one will send you an alert
if the other one doesn't respond.  If you had using a separate carrier and
located at a different site, you'd have a pretty good HA solution.  I think
the company that made these was Maxon.

J

On 9 January 2014 02:45, Jon Dustin <user-d8c63a8259c1@xymon.invalid> wrote:

Our solution was to send the alerts to a script that formatted a message
nicely and uses the Pushover.net API. Pushover sends push notifications
to one or several mobile phones. This doesn't help if the internet is
down, but we're an ISP and have other ways of knowing if that specific
scenario were to happen.

We used to use the email-to-SMS gateways offered by providers but it's
foolish if email is down and we also found that those gateways were very
unreliable.