load watch

If you want to keep your eye on a system and you don't even have cron you can keep this script running. It wakes up every 10 minutes and sends me an email if the load is more than six:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# Filename:                load_watch.py
# Description:             emails me if load too high
# Supported Langauge(s):   Python 2.5.1
# -------------------------------------------------------- 
import commands
import os
import time
import smtplib

def main():
    while(1):
        frequency = 60 * 10 # ten minutes
        warn_load = 6.0
        loadcmd = 'cut -d " " -f1 /proc/loadavg'
        loadavg = float(commands.getoutput(loadcmd))
        if loadavg > warn_load:
            send_warning(loadavg)
        time.sleep(frequency)
        print loadavg
    
def send_warning(loadavg):
    """emails high load as subject"""
    print "warning"
    domain = 'domain.tld'
    smtpServer = 'mail.' + domain
    fromAddr = 'load_watch@mail.' + domain
    toAddr = 'me@' + domain

    msg = ""
    msg += "To: " + toAddr + "\n"
    msg += "From: " + fromAddr + "\n"
    msg += "Subject: " + 'Mail Load: %s' % loadavg
    msg += "\n\n"

    server = smtplib.SMTP(smtpServer)
    server.set_debuglevel(0)
    server.sendmail(fromAddr, toAddr, msg)

if __name__=="__main__":
   main()