This script is intended to provide a simple way of monitoring different kinds of services.

First, make sure your server can send mails. This should lead to an email in your inbox:

echo "foo" | sendmail -t your_mail_address@example.com

Good news: if you have installed and configured services (to be monitored), this installation will be a cakewalk:

cd /your/desired/location/
git clone git://github.com/lpirl/meerkatmon.git
cd meerkatmon
nano meerkatmon.conf

Add all services to be monitored, exit the editor and - optionally - check if everything works as expected:

./meerkatmon.py

Then, add for example

*/23 * * * * /usr/bin/python3 -O /your/desired/location/meerkatmon/meerkatmon.py

to your crontab using crontab -e (preferably NOT as root) to check all services every 23 minutes.

Done.

In contrast to fully bloated monitoring tools, it is neither required to setup or maintain additional services (such as web or database servers), nor to learn new methods of configuration or installation. It makes use of tools, that are present on nearly every server (Python, Cron and the facility to send mails).

MeerkatMon offers strategies in the submodule strategies to check the availability of services. Administrators/Developers can easily provide new strategies by implementing a small interface on a class in this module.