Question: alternative(s) to sms/mms gateways 🔗 link

Question for the Xymon list:

What have you used, other than email-to-sms/mms gateway, to send xymon alerts to cell phones?
I've been hit a few times with unreliable email to mms gateway (TMobile).

I know about pushover.net. Are there any others?

Thanks,

glauber

I'm in the US and use Verizon Wireless.  I've used user-6b50f8a02ad7@xymon.invalid for
many years with success.  I don't get a whole lot of alerts (maybe 10-20 a
month).

If you don't like that you might look at something like PagerDuty.  They
have a good API and work well with our other software (not Xymon related).


Josh Luthman
Office: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Direct: XXX-XXX-XXXX
XXXX Wayne St
Suite XXXX
Troy, OH XXXXX

On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 11:41 AM, Ribeiro, Glauber <

user-59d088777028@xymon.invalid> wrote:

I use a Huawei device driven by Gammu.

Jeremy

Sent from my iPad

I've considered using Pushbullet for this.  It seems to have a good API,
and I already use Pushbullet for device-to-device sharing.  My concern
about Pushbullet is that there is no delegation capability nor can access
be granular.  So my passphrase needs to be stored on the Xymon server, and
anyone who gets hold of this can do anything with my Pushbullet account.

Pushover might have more granular security for these sorts of things.  But
a quick scan of their website indicates that there's only one user key for
everything.  PushBullet has been very responsive to feedback, so I might
suggest some enhancements to their API.

Of course this all fails if the Internet link is down.  This is also a risk
if email-to-SMS gateways are used, or if you rely on receiving email alerts
on your mobile device.  Hence locally-connected SMS gateways are preferred
for some.  These are typically mobile phones connected by cable, or GSM/3G
USB devices, or network-connected paging appliances.  In days of old,
modems could be used to dial up a carrier's "TAP" service to send SMS
messages, but many carriers no longer provide such a service and have
moved either to a web-based service or nothing.

For good coverage of the options, see the threads here:
  http://lists.xymon.com/archive/2014-January/038693.html

Cheers
Jeremy


On 25 August 2015 at 01:41, Ribeiro, Glauber <user-59d088777028@xymon.invalid>

wrote:

On Mon, Aug 24, 2015, at 10:41, Ribeiro, Glauber wrote:

Pushover.net and a script to use their HTTP API for sending the alerts.

Am Montag, 24. August 2015, 15:41:28 schrieb Ribeiro, Glauber:

Hello Glauber,

I read this as you're seaching for a more reliable solution than sending E-
Mails to a remote E-Mail-to-SMS Gateway.

Since it makes less sense to send alerts for network/internet is broken via internet, we needed an other solution. We're operating a wide area network and the xymon of course should alert us about network issues.

We are running SMS-Gateways directly attached to the Bigbrother/Hobbit/Xymon-
Servers for a very long time. The vendor of both of our modems is MOXA, but it's of course a much older model than this one:
http://www.moxa.com/product/OnCell_G2111.htm

But the specs haven't changed much from the first look. Today there are also some other vendors.

This takes a SIM-Card like a mobile phone, and is moutet to DIN-Rail, were also the external switching-powersupply is located.


On the Xymon-Servers we're running the smsd from the smstools provided by http://smstools3.kekekasvi.com. Since the Server is a Ubuntu they're already available as a package. We are running this as an E-Mail-to-SMS-Gateway more or less for historical reasons, or because we've some other Systems using this as E-Mail-to-SMS-
Gateway, choose one. We're running this as with a Script that is plugged into postfix as pipe-Script (perl-Script), but it would be also possible to let an Xymon-Alert-Script drop the SMS into the smsd-queue. Writing a file into a specific folder with some specific headers isn't really rocket science. ;-)

We're using this for about 12 years with the smstools, now. And some years with a Tobit-Server in between, before.


For one of the xymon servers, we needed to get out of the ferrocroncrete cellar rooms, where no mobile phone works, to get the modem work realible.


One thing you should also consider is, that SMS-Flatrates are (nearly) always shipped with a clause prohibidding the use for SMS-Gateways. On other contracts this is not so wide spread. So read the contract you are using for this carefully. This might affect the realibility of the alerts.
On the other hand you should have a look at the amount of send SMS carefully. Multipart SMSes might also increase expenses, but the smstools allow to deactivate them. ;-) :-)

This is not really a solution for sending huge amounts of SMSes (mainly because of the costs), but it's a highly independent way to send alerts. We are using 2 modems, one attached to each xymon server.

Kind regards,
	Lars

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