SAWDOG - Simple Active Watch-DOG

Simple: less than 1000 lines of code
Active: No need for daemons on the observed servers

SAWDOG - A collection of simple scripts, which informs in case of server outages
Copyright 1999-2006 by Christian Gloor, Max and Michi
 
This piece of code is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL)
You should have received a copy of the GPL (file COPYING) along with this script; 
if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Current maintainer: chgloor@digicomp.ch, don't hesitate to contact him if you have any questions.

Changelog
=========

Fall 1999: 1.0.0 initial  - chgloor@digicomp.ch: initial release for internal use only 
May  2000: 1.2.0          - michi@digicomp.ch: changed for sms use only 
May  2000: 2.0.0 phoenix  - chgloor: additional features (unknown state, logfile, locking)
                            michi:   additional expect scripts (icmp, smb)
June 2000: 2.1.0 generic  - chgloor: compact notification, one message per server
                                     aliases for long server names or ip addresses
                                     generic notification (can execute any binaries now)
June 2000: 2.2.0 speedup  - chgloor: speedup in the expect scripts
                                     'required' freature
Sept 2006: 2.4.0 webinterface - max/chgloor: added php-based web interface, code cleanup
				     

This is the README for Version 2.4.x
====================================

1) Abstract
   
   This script was initially written by Christian Gloor. About half a year
   later, it was adapted for use at DIGICOMP AG, a IT education company located
   in switzerland. 
   
   Sawdog consists of a script which informs the sysops of some mission
   critical servers in the case of a failure. The script executes a given
   set of small executables, i.e. expect scripts, and if one executable
   fails, sends an email or a sms to the sysop.

2) Installation

   The main script is sawdog.pl. It can be placed everywhere on the
   filesystem. 
   
   At the moment, the only configuration is done in the sawdog.conf file. If
   you keep this file not in the current directory, you need to edit the
   sawdog.pl source file. All file locations are stored in the sawdog.pl file.
   
   You can use crontab to start sawdog.pl every 5 minutes.

   Sawdog creates a logfile: sawdog.log and a status file: sawdog.status,
   if they don't exist, sawdog recreates them. Of course sawdog needs write
   permissions on the working directory. 
   
   There are some predefined expect scripts for some well known services:
   ftp, http, icmp, ssh, telnet, and smb. You can easily create your own
   expect scripts, or use any other executable which returns a return code of
   zero if it succeeds. Don't forget to contribute your aditions to the main
   code tree.

   Files needed:
   - sawdog.pl       the main file
   - sawdog.conf     the config file
   - services/       this directory is populated by the expect scripts
   
   Files recreated, if they don't exist:
   - sawdog.status   in this file the internal state is keept
   - sawdog.log      the logfile

3) Usage/Configuration

   See the postscript/pdf documentation on the website: open.digicomp.ch

4) To Do

   Create some more expect scripts for more ports.
   Build a nice package. 
   Correct spelling and grammar errors in the readme files.
   Clean up the source (again)