Installing whatsup

whatsup is installable via easy_install or python setup.py in the usual way from the python source at https://svn.openplans.org/svn/whatsup. The recommended installation procedure is with virtualenv:

python <(curl http://svn.colorstudy.com/virtualenv/trunk/virtualenv.py) whatsup
cd whatsup
. bin/activate
mkdir src
cd src
svn co https://svn.openplans.org/svn/whatsup
cd whatsup
python setup.py develop

You will also need data files (.ini) for contacts and sites. By default these live in ${VIRTUAL_ENV}/src/whatsup/contacts and ${VIRTUAL_ENV}/src/whatsup/sites, though this is configurable.

Instantiating whatsup

whatsup is served by the paste .ini file:

paster serve whatsup.ini

Application options may be specified in this .ini file in the [app:whatsup] section prefixed with whatsup.:

• contacts, sites: location of the contacts and sites files. can be a single file or a directory containing .ini files

• auto_reload: whether to reload the configuration on each request

• ping: whether to ping the sites

• ping_frequency: how often, in seconds, to ping the sites

• smtp_from: who to send email as if the user does not specified

• smtp_server: mail server to use. If not specified, whatsup will not send email

whatsup contact .ini files

A contact .ini file contains one or more sections, each corresponding to a contact. The name of the section should be the name of the contact. Several data are specifiable for each contact:

• email: comma separated list of email addresses.

• phone: comma separated list of phone numbers

• irc: comma separated list of IRC names

• aim: AIM screenname

• url: canonical web presence

• contact: description of how to contact this person, or a filename containing that information

For each comma separated list, the first item is considered primary.

whatsup site .ini files

A site .ini file contains one or more sections, each corresponding to a website. By convention, the section name is the domain name of the site. Several data are specifiable for each site:

• url: location of the site. If not specified, the url will be from the section name (presumedly the domain name)

• contact: comma separated list of contacts in case of site outage

• description: brief description of the website

• outage_procedure: if specified, a description of what to do in case the site is down or a filename containing that information. By default, this links to the contact form which emails the contacts upon submission.

• trac: URL of the associated Trac site