Welcome to the Autocheck web site.

Introduction

Autocheck is a GPL system administration tool that monitors unix computers on your network and sends sms-messages or emails to administrators when a problem arises.


Why?

I started developing autocheck because we needed a configurable program that would check resources etc on remote computers. We also wanted centralized administration and messaging functions with rules (eg timelimits for sms messages and emails).


Some Features

Some features include:
* Very configurable (albeit not simple to configure). The configuration files let you specify how a check should generate data, what checks to run on what systems etc.
* Extensible (in Perl). The program is pretty simple to expand if you know some Perl (you don't need a deep knowledge of Perl). Please contribute any new modules you write back to me :)
* Single point of administration. Since the programs are generated and distributed on the fly there are no old versions "floating" around causing problems. It is also quick to upgrade. Fixes etc automatically take effect on all systems.
* Time limits on messages. Time limits can be defined in the MAILRULES and PAGERRULES files.
* SMS (text to mobile phones) messages. Implemented using gnokii and the small network spooler written in Perl (below).


Limitations

There are so far some limitations to the system, after all it is only a beta release (don't be fooled by the 4 in the name, it has historical reasons (this is the fourth incarnation of an internal autocheck engine)).


It can't check non unix computers. I want to add a feature for checking WinNT machines, but I haven't gotten around to do this yet (It does check webpages etc on non unix computers, of course).


The SMS server needs to be rewritten so that it is more stable and requires authentication etc. I also keep thinking it would be nice to have the SMS server handle the phonebook instead of autocheck. Maybe the SMS server should accept incoming SMS's aswell and process them somehow.


How?

The way autocheck works is that it runs perl scripts on remote computers, or the local one, and the perl script gives information back to the main autocheck engine. The scripts are generated on the fly from a template and copied to the remote host. After the script is run, the output is examined and if an alarm level is met appropriate action is taken.

You might be interested in reading the inital mock DOCUMENTATION as it is probably more explanatory than this webpage


Distribution

The current distribution is here Note to GNU/Linux users: Autocheck was developed under Dynix and the check scripts might need modification to allow them to run under Linux. I will be fixing this when I get the time (it is still very much in beta...)

Note! Don't run the sms-services as root as they probably contain loads of security holes etc. Also, i wouldn't put it anywhere where someone might try to hack it (ie, don't put it on an untrusted network)...


Author

My name is Henrik Bilar and I work as an unix network administrator in London. You can contact me on hbilar@users.sourceforge.net. This is my first "major" perl program so there's probably loads of bugs floating around and the code is probably not as pretty as it could be. Actually, it is also my first open source project :)

All feedback and bug-fixes (there are a few bugs floating around, i'm sure) are greatly appreciated.




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