Logdog is a tool that monitors messages passing through syslogd and takes action based on key words and phrases. Logdog has a configuration file which allows you to specify a list of key words or phrases to alert on, and a list of commands that can be run when those words are encountered. Logdog is licensed under the GPL.
Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic SpreadSheet (Moodss) is a graphical monitoring application with a complete graphical user interface (GUI) to conveniently monitor network services and send alerts when thresholds are crossed. Moodss is a deceptively simple tool that could characterized as a dynamic network-aware spreadsheet. It can poll devices using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), receive and send SNMP traps, and perform network service checks via Nagios plug-ins. It can optionally be used with the Modular Object-Oriented Multi-Purpose Service (Moomps) monitoring daemon to delegate monitoring tasks to a separate lightweight application after all thresholds have been defined with Moodss. The best way to see how Moodss operates is to walk through some examples so that’s what I’ll do in the steps below. I wish to give special thanks to Jean-Luc for his valuable assistance with Moodss on OS X, and for writing such a fine program.
Here's a dirty script I wrote to install nagios and Lilac on a clean CentOS 5.4 install. This script doesn't care about anyone other than itself (it'll change the mysql password for instance) so may not be entirely perfect for your needs.
Central Loghost Mini-HOWTO This page is simply a collection of open source tools you can use to glue together your own centralized (syslog) loghost. Included are example configuration settings so that you can configure your loghost in a manner similar to mine. There is very little that you need to read and understand in order to use these tools. Also, these tools are widely used and therefore easy to get help with on internet mailing lists. I established a centralized location for syslog collection in order to facilitate: Log reporting real time alerting periodic (several times per day) summary reporting Log storage long term archival for possible later analysis Tools used: UNIX hosts (Linux and Solaris) Modified logcheck script(s). Syslog-NG Swatch though I'm slowly moving to SEC, this page will be updated once I've completely switched Splunk for a GUI interface Stunnel
Any system administrator worth their salt has some kind of system for collecting and maintaining information about all the systems they're responsible for. Gathering that info by hand, especially when the systems are inherited, can be time-consuming. Or you could try out boxinfo, a Perl script that gathers most or all of the information you'd want in a few easy steps. Boxinfo is simple to run, just run it on any Linux system that has Perl and it will look for information about the disk space, processor, memory, network interfaces, mounted disks, versions of utilities, and general system environment. Once finished, it prints out an HTML page or page in Wikimedia format, and a debug file that shows all commands run and the output. This can be useful to identify Perl modules you might be missing to gather information.