check-site-up

A simple shell script to check that a site is up and loading expected content. Requires only curl and grep as dependencies.

Useful for adding to a crontab (use the -c flag).

Also useful for monitoring less stable .onion addresses (wrap it through torify, and set a reasonable retry with -r in case of intermittent Tor instabilities).

Options

  -u    URL of the site to check
  -k    Key word on the page to look for
  -r    Amount of retries before alerting (default: 3)
  -t    Time to wait in between retries (default: 5)
  -s    Silent mode (you can check the return code for success/failure)
  -c    Cron mode (only errors get output)
  -h    This help message.

Examples

Check from the command line that the site mig5.net is loading and shows the term 'Sysadmin'

~# ./check-site-up -u https://mig5.net -k Sysadmin
Attempt #1 to check https://mig5.net for Sysadmin
OK - found Sysadmin on https://mig5.net

Try 10 times with a delay of 2 seconds

~# ./check-site-up -u https://mig5.net/blah -k Sysadmin -r 10 -t 2
Attempt #1 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #2 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #3 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #4 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #5 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #6 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #7 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #8 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #9 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah
Attempt #10 to check https://mig5.net/blah for Sysadmin
CRITICAL - couldn't find Sysadmin on https://mig5.net/blah

Check a Tor .onion site (hint: wrap it through torify)

~# /usr/bin/torify ./check-site-up -u http://yvhz3ofkv7gwf5hpzqvhonpr3gbax2cc7dee3xcnt7dmtlx2gu7vyvid.onion/ -k Sysadmin
Attempt #1 to check http://yvhz3ofkv7gwf5hpzqvhonpr3gbax2cc7dee3xcnt7dmtlx2gu7vyvid.onion/ for Sysadmin
OK - found Sysadmin on http://yvhz3ofkv7gwf5hpzqvhonpr3gbax2cc7dee3xcnt7dmtlx2gu7vyvid.onion/

Silent mode (no output, but you can review the return code)

~# ./check-site-up -u https://mig5.net -k Sysadmin -s
~# echo $?
0

Example crontab (Similar to silent mode, but the -c flag prints errors, which can be mailed to you with MAILTO in your cron)

MAILTO="you@example.com"
*/15 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/torify /usr/local/bin/check-site-up -u http://yvhz3ofkv7gwf5hpzqvhonpr3gbax2cc7dee3xcnt7dmtlx2gu7vyvid.onion/ -k Sysadmin -c 2> /dev/null