Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W `ATI9``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W `ATI9`````` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W `ATI9``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W``` Sending out-of-band alerts is one of the core concepts in monitoring. You can think it through this way: never try to alert about a trouble with an email server by sending email and never try to use internet services to report on network outages. Considering most of what I do at work relies heavily on the network, it makes sense to configure the monitoring system to use things other than the email gateway or an XMPP federated chat client to alert administrators about problems.

The most common methods to deliver these alerts is the Short Message Service, also known as SMS. With the rapid proliferation of smart phones amongst server administrators and, more importantly, unlimited SMS texting plans, this is the easiest way to alert admins of problems without relying on infrastructure that you control. Setting up gnokii-smsd to relay messages via a USB attached GSM cell phone is easy enough.

There are a large number of administrators in the US, however, that live in places that don’t get adequate cell coverage, or who’s work won’t provide SMS plans for their devices. If they are in an on-call rotation, it’s likely that they have an analog pager – one that you actually pick up a phone and dial a number to deliver messages to. The signal strength requirements for these devices is an order of magnitude less than that of a standard mobile phone, and are quite reliable. Thankfully, delivering pages to analog pagers costs less than $150 plus the recurring costs of a phone line.

This is the setup.

Get a PCIe modem and install it in your server. We’re using a MultiTech Systems “MT9234ZPX-PCIE-NVC2” – which is a standard low profile PCIe card. Handily, the driver is already in the 2.6 series of kernels, so unless you have a serial card installed, you’re good to go. (And, yes, you can use an older modem that plugs into the serial port, but then you’ve got even more wires and power supplies to deal with.)

Next, make an alias in /dev to the proper serial port. Just ln -s /dev/modem /dev/ttyS3, where ttyS3 is your serial device. Fire up minicom, initialize the country-specific settings (AT%T19,0,37), disable dial tone detection (AT&D0&W) and write the firmware to the card (AT&F&W `ATI9``````

Test that you can actually use the phone line by using ATDT 1234567890, entering in your phone number where appropriate. If you need to get an outside line, commonly by dialing a 9 and waiting for a few seconds, pre-pend 9, to the number – the comma tells the modem to wait for a second before dialing the rest of the numbers.

Congratulations! You now have a working modem. In the next post, I’ll talk about setting up QPage, the software you’ll use to queue and send pages.