Category: Nagios

  • Tracking ADSL modem statistics with Nagios

    Here at Ice Moon Prison, we are blessed with an ADSL2+ lifeline to the Internet.  At the same time, we are cursed with degrading copper and have seen a gradual decline in our sync speeds over the last two years. To monitor the situation, and to provide ammunition to use when technicians doubt our sincerity, we have created Nagios scripts to collect statistics continuously.

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  • The Wednesday Problem: Checking how many tuners EyeTV needs for scheduled recordings

    Here at Ice Moon Prison, inmates receive the Australian digital free-to-air broadcast, on the assumption that it is the least consumer-friendly television ecosystem in existence. Shows routinely run late, requiring those using PVR software to add at least 20 minutes to each scheduled recording Just In Case. Networks also collude and ensure that all the shows you actually want to watch are scheduled at the same time on different channels. We call this the Wednesday Problem.

    Ice Moon Prison uses EyeTV and HDHomeRuns for a total of four tuners. This is usually sufficient except for the busiest Wednesdays. Rather than manually check the schedule and count whether five or more tuners are needed at any given time, we have an AppleScript … er, script, which gets this information straight from EyeTV and reports how many tuners are needed for its upcoming scheduled recordings.

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