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I am looking for either an app or a way to allow my 3 Ubuntu server's running in my house on my local network to send a notification to my Android phone when a task is done.

Every hour or so one of the 3 servers finishes what they are doing, I need for them to be able to send short text notifications to my Droid phone when it's locally on the network. Of course it's IP on my local network never changes, so that will always be the same.

Is there anything for this? And how do I get it up and running?

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2 Answers 2

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There are several ways to accomplish things like this:

Using Atomics to kill the chicken

You could e.g. setup one of your Ubuntu machines as a Nagios server (or any similar service). There are several clients available for Android, like e.g. aNag and uNagi Nagios client on android (the latter even has plugins for Locale/Tasker for more flexibility: Locale uNagi Notifier Plug-in and Locale uNagi Settings Plug-in, so you even can setup automatic actions on your device based on the notifications).

Plenty more of similar solutions available, e.g. with Cacti...

The simplicistic approach

At the end of your scripts, you could place a line to have them send you a mail to e.g. your GMail address. This can e.g. be done using the mailx command:

mailx -s "[WooFoo] script finished" [email protected]

(of course, replace [email protected] with your real address). As soon as that mail arrives, GMail (or any other mail client you use on your Android device) would trigger a notification.

Enhancing the simple approach

Tasker can react on incoming mail for the GMail app or K-9 Mail. That's why I put the [WooFoo] in front of the subject: replace that by any specific keyword which should trigger your Tasker action. Tasker then can "eat" the mail (so it doesn't stick in your account for manual clean-up) and perform a desired action: play a specific tune, vibrate your phone using a specific pattern, generate a pop-up message, even execute specific JavaScript code (see the Actions section of the Tasker UserGuide for additional ideas).

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  • That's kind of cool but I wasn't looking for server monitoring, I was looking for simple notifications. I don't need to monitor Server load and RAM and processes running and such. I just need that when a script is done running for it to send a notification to my Droid. This is a cool system but from what I read from the wiki it is a server/network monitoring software, not what I need.
    – jfreak53
    Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 18:32
  • You don't need to setup everything. AFAIK you can define yourself what Nagios is monitoring. But admitted, it might be a bit overload. If it's just about a short notification: why not using the command-line mail client (sendmail, mailx) on Ubuntu to send a message to your gmail address? Again, Tasker then could be used to trigger almost any action when such a mail arrives on your Android device. If that's an option you like better, I'll update my answer accordingly if you wish :)
    – Izzy
    Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 18:42
  • Well, didn't want to wait -- hope this update better fits your requirements :)
    – Izzy
    Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 19:49
  • Thanks for the write up, but this requires tasker, which costs $6. If I'm going to pay $6 I would use www.notifymyandroid.com since it's only $4 and does exactly what I need. I just don't like using someone else's service, I would love to find a notifier that uses push and lets me install my own push service on my own server :(
    – jfreak53
    Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 20:04
  • The push by mail doesn't require anybody else's service -- so the Tasker part was just an additional idea. There might even be other automation (or notification) apps which can do this for cheaper or even for free. If a plain "text notification" is good for you, the mailx part would do that already.
    – Izzy
    Commented Dec 12, 2012 at 22:17
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Why re-invent the wheel? Could you not just re-use an existing service for your notifications, the simplest would just be to use email or Twitter. There are many, many existing ways to hook servers up to send email or Twitter messages, and many clients on Android that will notify you when these arrive, and can prioritise and do different notifications depending on the message.

My server at home has its own Gmail account, it mails me about anything I need to know, and I have rules and prioritisations in my Gmail to sort the messages on their importance, and star them when necessary, and the Android client notifies me.

Big bonus to doing it this way is that you're not tied to checking these notifications on your phone, but have many ways to view and check them on many different platforms.

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