Re: Paging script for tkined

Stephen L. Johnson (sjohnson@godzilla.monsters.org)
Wed, 20 Nov 1996 00:34:53 -0600

> Are there any scripts that I can run from within tkined to send
> alpha-numeric messages to my skytel 2-way pager after a site has been
> down for a certain length of time? I know I can do it with an email to
> pager gateway but if the main router is down email will not work.
>
> Henning Hogue
> henning@themall.net
>

I've got a couple of solutions to your problem. I've got an expect script
which sends pages using Skytel's dial-up terminal servers. It's a plain
vanilla script which is not very robust. Currently we are using a a package I
found called sendpage7a. Overall I have been very pleased with it.

Sendpage functions very similarly to sendmail. Pages are queued like mail
messages. Sendpage, running as a daemon, periodicly processes the pages. If
any delivery errors are encounterd, it will retry to send the pages again.

As I said sendpage is very similar to sendmail. Most of the command-line
switches are like sendmail's. You use sendpage to queue the pages like
sendmail. You can even define sendpage as a mail transfer agent in sendmail.
This created a e-mail paging gateway.

Sendmail also has a very powerful and flexible aliasing capability like
sendmail's. You can aliases can be a single user, a group of users, or an
included file that has a list of users.

Sendpage can not only be used for Skytel paging, but also any provider which
accepts PET/TAP pages. It can also work for numeric paging. It as has E-mail
notifiction of delivery and ecountered errors.

Usage examples:
echo "System xyz is down" | sendpage 1234567.skytel 09876543.acmepaging
pagesteve page-oncall

The hardest problem I've had was configuring the source code for the modem I'm
using. It used hard-coded nuermic response codes for communicating with
modem. You have to be sure to defaint every possible connect response code or
the program will end the connection attaemp with an error.

At work, we are using to page the network and on-call people when a system or
routrer goes down, our system administrators when an eod-of-day process has
problem and for sending out alpha-pages in general. I've also got a web page
and CGI script when allows people to send alpha-pages which web browsers.
This gets the most use of all by everyone in my group.

The package is at various FTP site around the Internet. I don't remember
exactly where I got my copy, but I've put the source code file in the on my
FTP site at ftp://godzilla.monsters.org/pub/sendpage7a.tar.gz. Please be
patient my connection is only a 28.8 dialup.

Stephen L. Johnson
<sjohnson@monsters.org>