busybox-uptime-check

Simple and resilient busybox based system monitoring, intended for use with various remote uptime check services.

Usage

• Configure nginx to serve selected directory (see contrib/nginx)
• Configure up-check to be started from cron (see contrib/cron)
• Configure variables in *up-check.conf" file residing in same directory as the script itself (always use EXPORT)
• Add/Modify scripts in up-check.d to your needs
• Configure your remote uptime check service to periodically fetch your url (https://DOMAIN/DIR/check) and also look for ALL OK string

#Features

• Stupid simple (KISS principle)
• Pure (busybox) shell
• Low resources usage during system check and webcheck
• Resilient to almost any failure (hopefully)
• No extra running deamons
• No extra dependencies

How it works

up-check script produces for every hour new file in output directory, with date, OK/FAIL status for every check script from up-check.d along with optional error message in case of failure. Final ALL OK will be added if every check returned OK. Webserver is configured to serve time based current file (if it can find one).

Possible failures and their handling

The ones i've thinked of:

• Some check fails => no 'ALL OK' in check http response => immediate remote ALERT
• Web server not working => connection error => immediate remote ALERT
• Cron service not working => no new file produced => delayed remote ALERT within next 60 minutes
• Disk full => no new file produced => immediate or delayed remote ALERT
• Disk goes sudenly read-only => no new file produced => delayed remote ALERT

Why using busybox

Busybox has been chosen, because it provides simple and powerfull shell scripting capatibilities, with great flexibility, while maintaining low resource usage compared to traditional shell (i.e. bash).

How to write check script

• Check script verifies whatever conditions it should check
• If check fails, script should exit with failure (i.e. via exit 1) and it should also produce simple descriptive error message
• Otherwise no message should be produced and script should exit with 0 (SUCCESS)

However, this is only guideline - you can script your checks as you want/need.