EdVoncken.NET

In a previous blog post, I described how to use Twitter for Nagios notifications – dubbing it “Twagios”.

A couple of months later, Twitter stopped supporting basic authentication (username/password). This meant that the old (simple) way of sending notifications stopped working. In this post, I’ll explain how I replaced the old Twagios with a new script – “Twagios 2.0″

First of all, a big thank you to Jeff Miller for writing this excellent post on using the Python tweepy library to create a simple command line client. I simply followed Jeff’s instructions…

1. Install the tweepy library
2. Create a new OAuth registration at http://twitter.com/oauth_clients
3. Create the new “Twagios 2.0″ client
4. Configure Nagios notifications

Install the tweepy library

I’m on CentOS 6.0. Assuming that you already have Python installed, the easiest way to get tweepy is through pip, the Python package manager:

  yum install python-pip
  pip-python install tweepy

Note: why name the package python-pip, and the binary pip-python? How intuitive

Create a new OAuth registration

I am assuming that you already created a separate Twitter account for sending out Nagios notifications – if not, read my old blog post. The next steps were taken from Jeff Miller’s blog:

Go to http://twitter.com/oauth_clients and log in with your “Twitter Bot” account. Register a nice name for your new script as a “client” with “read & write” permissions. Twitter should issue you with a “Consumer Key” and “Consumer Secret” for your new client.

Authorize access to your “Twitter Bot” account by replacing the CUSTOMER_KEY and CUSTOMER_SECRET values in the following temporary script:

  #!/usr/bin/env python

  import tweepy

  CONSUMER_KEY = 'paste your Consumer Key here'
  CONSUMER_SECRET = 'paste your Consumer Secret here'

  auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
  auth_url = auth.get_authorization_url()
  print 'Please authorize: ' + auth_url
  verifier = raw_input('PIN: ').strip()
  auth.get_access_token(verifier)
  print "ACCESS_KEY = '%s'" % auth.access_token.key
  print "ACCESS_SECRET = '%s'" % auth.access_token.secret

Run the script, open the “Please authorize” URL in your browser and confirm authorization for your “Twitter Bot” account. Twitter should now give you a PIN number. Enter this PIN number and the script should display an ACCESS_KEY and ACCESS_SECRET. We now have all the information successfully authenticate the new client with Twitter.

Create your new “Twagios 2.0″ client

Create the actual “Twagios 2.0″ script; replace the CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET, ACCESS_KEY and ACCESS_SECRET with the proper values:

  #!/usr/bin/env python
  #
  # See: http://talkfast.org/2010/05/31/twitter-from-the-command-line-in-python-using-oauth

  import sys
  import tweepy

  CONSUMER_KEY = 'paste your Consumer Key here'
  CONSUMER_SECRET = 'paste your Consumer Secret here'
  ACCESS_KEY = 'paste your Access Key here'
  ACCESS_SECRET = 'paste your Access Secret here'

  auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
  auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_KEY, ACCESS_SECRET)
  api = tweepy.API(auth)
  api.update_status(sys.argv[1])

Done! Send your first tweet:

  chmod 755 twagios
  ./twagios "Hello World"

Configure Nagios

The notification commands describedin my old post should be changed as follows:

  ### Twitter ###

  define command{
        command_name    host-notify-by-twitter
        command_line    /usr/local/bin/twagios "@MyTwitterAccount $HOSTALIAS$ is $HOSTSTATE$. $HOSTOUTPUT$. Time: $SHORTDATETIME$"
  }

  define command{
        command_name    notify-by-twitter
        command_line    /usr/local/bin/twagios "@MyTwitterAccount $SERVICEDESC$ @ $HOSTNAME$ is $SERVICESTATE$. $SERVICEOUTPUT$. Time: $SHORTDATETIME$"
  }

Note: Replace “@MyTwitterAccount” with your actual Twitter account so your Twitter Bot account can send you @mentions.

You could even have it send DM’s by prefixing the message with “d “, for example:

  /usr/local/bin/twagios "d @MyTwitterAccount $HOSTALIAS$ is $HOSTSTATE$. $HOSTOUTPUT$. Time: $SHORTDATETIME$"

Update 2011.12.05 – message length check

As suggested by @erik_mol on Twitter, the above script lacks a check for message length (140 characters max.):

Twagios script needs minor tweak; s = sys.argv[1] api.update_status(s[0:140]). Saves other readers headache, thanks

As message length is indeed important, I have also added some sample substitutions (“WARNING” becomes “WARN” and so on), reducing message length where possible.

  #!/usr/bin/env python
  #
  # See: http://talkfast.org/2010/05/31/twitter-from-the-command-line-in-python-using-oauth

  import sys
  import tweepy
  import string

  CONSUMER_KEY = 'paste your Consumer Key here'
  CONSUMER_SECRET = 'paste your Consumer Secret here'
  ACCESS_KEY = 'paste your Access Key here'
  ACCESS_SECRET = 'paste your Access Secret here'

  auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
  auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_KEY, ACCESS_SECRET)
  api = tweepy.API(auth)

  # Process the commandline argument, replace words etc. to shorten the message
  s = sys.argv[1]
  s = string.replace(s,"WARNING","WARN")
  s = string.replace(s,"PROBLEM","PROB")
  s = string.replace(s,"CRITICAL","CRIT")

  # Send the message, 140 characters max.
  api.update_status(s[0:140])

Enjoy the script – happy Sinterklaas everyone