The purpose of whosup.py is to provide an extremely simple app that regularly polls a set of servers, and reports when one or more goes down. I wrote this to aid in keeping track of power outages in my laboratories at Dalhousie University. We use uninterruptible power supplies, but regardless, if there's a power outage we need to know about it. A clear signal is that the (wired) internet has failed in our building. When that happens, this code gives a visual cue and also triggers a message to be sent to us on a Slack channel. That way, we get the message on our phones without having to be in direct contact with the computer running the app.

From github. There is only a single python file to download and a template of the YAML input file. Nothing to compile.

The list of servers to watch, and the Slack webhook data (private!) is read by the program from a file in YAML format. A template is included. You need to add the name by which your server is found on the internet, and also the port it uses for connections. For ssh this is typically 22, but we change the default on many of our servers to cut down on bot attacks.

• ./whosup.py will run the program, and assume the input YAML file is in the same directory and named whosup.yaml
• ./whosup.py -h gives a very minimal help message.
• ./whosup.py -f your.yaml will run the program with the YAML input file of your choosing.