Игорь Олемской — практические заметки по системному администрированию Linux CentOS

Here are the steps I’ve taken to turn on user chat logging for a jabber server. Please note that this way is not very efficient as it logs chats in plain html file. Logging into database might be more suitable for you. Step 1: Checkout jabber modules User chat logging in plain html files are [...]

When Twitter was still in its early stages, you could track certain search terms in near-realtime via Jabber. It was quite popular and its performance degraded over time as more users signed up and began posting updates. Eventually, Twitter killed the jabber bot altogether. Many users have asked when it will return.

Well, it hasn't returned, but you can build your own replacement with ruby, a jabber account, and a few gems. While it won't do everything that the original jabber bot did, you can still track tweets mentioning certain terms very quickly.

Here's how to get started:

First, install the tweetstream and xmpp4r-simple gems:

gem install tweetstream xmpp4r-simple

Next, you'll need a jabber account. You'll probably want to make one for the exclusive use of your jabber bot. I chose to make up a quick account at ChatMask for mine.

The last step is to drop a copy of this script on your server:

#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'tweetstream/client'
require 'tweetstream/hash'
require 'tweetstream/status'
require 'tweetstream/user'
require 'tweetstream/daemon'
require 'xmpp4r-simple'
 
jabber = Jabber::Simple.new('jabberbot@yourjabberserver.com','jabberpassword')
 
tweets = TweetStream::Client.new(twitterusername,twitterpassword)
 
tweets.track('celtics','lakers','finals','nba') do |status, client|
  imtext = "#{status.user.screen_name}: #{status.text} \r\n"
  imtext += "[http://twitter.com/#{status.user.screen_name}/status/#{status.id}]"
  jabber.deliver("yourjabberusername@yourjabberserver.com",imtext)
end
 
jabber.disconnect

You'll want to be sure to fill in the following:

• your jabber bot's username and password
• the username and password for the twitter account that will monitor the stream
• the search terms you want to track
• the destination jabber account where the messages should be sent

Ensure that your jabber account has authorized the jabber bot's account so that you'll actually receive the messages. Also, Twitter is very strict with their streaming API tracking terms. It's a good idea to review their entire Streaming API documentation to ensure that you're not going to end up having your account temporarily or permanently blacklisted.

Once everything is ready to go, you can just run the script within GNU screen or via nohup. There's still a bit more error checking to do around jabber reconnections, but the script has run non-stop for well over two weeks at a time without a failure.

Reincarnation of Twitter's realtime XMPP search term tracking with ruby is a post from: Major Hayden's Racker Hacker blog.

c0b6ad7e-f251-11df-b20b-4040336e00ef

I just updated the CentOS RPMs and spec file in my repository for Zabbix 1.8. This is a minor version bump to 1.8.1 of Zabbix. See their changelog for changes to Zabbix. Also, I added some new features based on requests from users…

1. IPMI Support
2. Jabber support
3. NOTE (corrected): SSH did not make it into this one, I will package it in the next release

NOTE: If you have problems installing zabbix-web because of the PHP >= 5.2 dependency, please visit this link: PHP >= 5.2 requirements for zabbix-web

All you need to do if you have my repository is run `yum update` to upgrade your packages, if you don’t know about it yet, visit the link below for more info on my repository!

  Article links:

1. My Yum RPM Repository
2. Zabbix 1.8.1 RPM Spec File
3. Zabbix 1.8r5 Previous RPM update
4. PHP >= 5.2 requirements for zabbix-web