Chapter 1

Tutorial

Build a real Scrippy script, step by step.

The script: disk_watch.py

Throughout this tutorial, you will write disk_watch.py, a script that monitors the usage of filesystems and reports the result with an exit status compatible with monitoring tools such as Nagios, Icinga or Centreon.

The script starts as a few lines of code. Each step adds one Scrippy concept to it:

Step Concept What disk_watch.py learns
1 First script The declarative header and the execution context
2 Logging Checking several mount points, with meaningful log levels
3 History Returning a monitoring exit status and tracing every execution
4 Configuration file Getting its mount points and thresholds from a validated configuration file
5 Options and arguments Overriding the configuration from the command line
6 Secrets Keeping an API token out of the logs
7 Workspace and environment Writing a report file
8 Error handling Handling unavailable mount points and invalid thresholds
9 Access control Restricting its execution to the members of the ops group
10 Concurrent executions Preventing simultaneous executions

Then, the modules chapter extends disk_watch.py with each Scrippy module: Rendering the report from a template, checking remote servers over SSH, querying network appliances with SNMP, storing the measures in a database, sending alerts to an API, mailing the report and archiving it in a Git repository.

Before you start

  • Scrippy must be installed.
  • The examples assume a default user installation for the user luiggi: The Scrippy directories are located in /home/luiggi/.local/share/scrippy. Adapt the paths to your own installation.
  • Create a working directory for the tutorial, i.e: ~/tutorial, and run the script from there.

Note: The code of each step is complete: You can copy it over the previous version of disk_watch.py.