Monitoring with ICQ

Another modern method for the mobile age to be up to date everywhere about your infrastructure. Everyone has a mobile device with internet access, you need only a ICQ client to receive information notifications.

Today I’m going to talk about how to bring this idea to live…

Client (PC or mobile device iPad or whatever) side configuration:
Install icq client and go online, that’s all =)

Server side configuration:

Install a tiny command line instant messenger client (Debian/Ubuntu way):

1

apt-get install centerim-utf8

Add a additional system user or use existing user for usage (adduser id), if you can please revoke root privileges;)

Before you go on you need a second ICQ-Account or you get a new one from official icq site:

Start centerim “centerim-utf8” as new user, and click done to continue to account manager:

Now you are able to configure icq, yahoo, jabber and a lot of other protocols, we choose icq.
Enter your UIN and password to continue.

1

su - id -c "screen -d -m /usr/bin/centericq-utf8"

This process will run in background as user “id”.

Add a cron job with this tiny script which will monitor special system behaviors:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36

#!/bin/bash
 
# logfile to monitor
LOG=/var/log/syslog
# centerim binary file
CIM=/usr/bin/centericq-utf8
# lines to watch in $LOG
LINE=20
# we are looking for
EXPR="DHCPREQUEST"
# md5-hash of last run
MDFILE=/home/id/monitoring/auth.md5
# filtered messages
TXTFILE=/home/id/monitoring/auth.txt
# filtered messages
TXTFILE2=/home/id/monitoring/auth.new
# previliged user to run centericq
JABBERUSER=id
# protocoll
PROTO=icq
# reciever UIM
UIN=905720
# filter garbage
EXCL='munin|Invalid|getaddrinfo'
 
OLD=`cat $MDFILE`
tail -$LINE $LOG | grep -E $EXPR | grep -v -E "$EXCL" > $TXTFILE2
READ=`tail -1 $TXTFILE2 | md5sum | awk '{print $1};'`
 
if [ "$READ" == "$OLD" ]; then
    exit 0
else
    echo -e $READ > $MDFILE
    cat $TXTFILE2 > $TXTFILE
    su - $JABBERUSER -c "cat $TXTFILE | $CIM -s msg -p $PROTO -t $UIN"
fi

1

mkdir /home/$username/monitoring

Every time this script will be executed by cron, you will receive a ICQ-message.