I am looking for ways to know when my servers goes down.. either by a ping script.. or something similiar. I'm not sure if it is possible to do be notified via sms, but at least via email (so I can check on my phone periodically).

I did a search and saw this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=355059

I'm thinking of using just one server to monitor my other servers, to see if they are up... so i got the following to ask:

1) Other than just ping, can I check the status of that particular server(s) services? mysqld, httpd, named etc etc....

2) You guys know of ways to do it via sms? What do I need.. some affordable services I hope...

In the link above, there are some links but it seems that the scripts is for each server... not that it is a problem.. but my network setup is such that some of my servers are having private IPs only as I use load balancing solutions... so having a web/gui control panel to monitor for those machine is out of the questions as I can't see it.

Anyone?
Would appreciate some directions.. as I know this topic is quite an old one... but not sure what to search in particular for my requirements

many thanks!

well that post certainly answers the checking side. i use opennms for 2000+ devices but for smaller implementations i'd suggest nagios of cacti. you can easily make either one interface to smssend which will use a modem to send the sms at a standard call rate. there are plenty of online sms pages that do do it for free, but i don't know of any offhand, and if you do find a free one, i don't know how easy it would be to automate their usage. but at worst you can notify a local email account and make smssend act upon reciept of email via procmail or similar.

Take a look at BigBrother http://www.bb4.org/