Title: Send XMPP messages from the command line | |
Author: Solène | |
Date: 25 May 2023 | |
Tags: xmpp monitoring selfhosting reed-alert | |
Description: In this blog post, you will learn how to use the program | |
go-sendxmpp to programmatically send XMPP messages from a script | |
# Introduction | |
As a reed-alert user for monitoring my servers, while using emails | |
works efficiently, I wanted to have more instant notifications for | |
critical issues. I'm also an happy XMPP user, so I looked for a | |
solution to send XMPP messages from a command line. | |
More about reed-alert on the blog | |
Reed-alert project git repository | |
I will explain how to use the program go-sendxmpp to send messages from | |
a command line, this is a newer drop-in replacement for the old perl | |
sendxmpp that doesn't seem to work anymore. | |
go-sendxmpp project git repository | |
# Installation | |
Following go-sendxmpp documentation, you need go to be installed, and | |
then run `go install salsa.debian.org/mdosch/go-sendxmpp@latest` to | |
compile the binary in `~/go/bin/go-sendxmpp`. Because it's a static | |
binary, you can move it to a directory in `$PATH`. | |
If I'm satisfied of it, I'll import go-sendxmpp into the OpenBSD ports | |
tree to make it available as a package for everyone. | |
# Configuration | |
Open a shell with the user that is going to run go-sendxmpp, prepare | |
the configuration file in its default location: | |
```shell | |
mkdir -p ~/.config/go-sendxmpp | |
touch ~/.config/go-sendxmpp/config | |
chmod 400 ~/.config/go-sendxmpp/config | |
``` | |
Edit the file `~/.config/go-sendxmpp/config` to add the two lines: | |
``` | |
username: myuser@myserver | |
password: hunter2_oryourpassword | |
``` | |
Now, your user should be ready to use `go-sendxmpp`, I recommend always | |
enabling the flag `-t` to use TLS to connect to the server, but you | |
should really choose an XMPP server providing TLS-only. | |
The program usage is simple: `echo "this is a message for you" | | |
go-sendxmpp dest@remote`, and you are done. It's easy to integrate it | |
in shell tasks. | |
Note that go-sendxmpp allows you to get the password for a command | |
instead of storing it in plain text, this may be more convenient and | |
secure in some scenarios. | |
# Reed-alert configuration | |
Back to reed-alert, using go-sendxmpp is as easy as declaring a new | |
alert type, especially using the email template: | |
```common-lisp | |
(alert xmpp "echo -n '[%state%] Problem with %function% %date% %params%' | go-s… | |
;; example of use | |
(=> xmpp ping :host "dataswamp.org" :desc "Ping to dataswamp.org") | |
``` | |
# Conclusion | |
XMPP is a very reliable communication protocol, I'm happy that I found | |
go-sendxmpp, a modern, working and simple way to programmatically send | |
me alerts using XMPP. |