Welcome.

Totmann is a dead man's switch or watchdog timer for your cron jobs. It notifies you via email when your scheduled jobs are not running on time, or when jobs finish with errors. Use it, for example, to make sure that your backup is running on time and not out of space or as a simple machine uptime monitoring tool.

How does it work?

Totmann provides a REST interface. Whenever a cron job finishes, it simply posts to a specific URL to let totmann know that the job finished. That means, you're only one call to wget/curl away from adding totmann to your cron jobs! Your job can optionally transfer the return code its main command to totmann to distinguish whether the command encountered errors or not.

Additionally, there are URLs for logging when the job started and to transfer the job's logfile to totmann. Using these features is optional. The logfile can be checked against regular expressions to detect warnings or malformed output.

Whenever a command did not finish successfully in a defined interval or an error condition was detected, totmann can notify you via email. You can use services such as Pushover or IFTTT to create individual notification channels. (Note that you can even call totmann from IFTTT, see below.)

totmann logs a configurable number of events for your cron jobs to assist in debugging your jobs.

What can I do with totmann?

Use it to make sure that not only your backup job is running on time, but also to detect whether the backup command finished without errors.

is running on time, but also to detect whether the backup command finished without errors. Make sure that your automated compile job does not output warnings.

Let your Raspberry Pi ping totmann to ensure that the Pi has not crashed and has internet connectivity.

and has internet connectivity. Use IFTTT to send a request to totmann every time it is raining and get a reminder to water your plants after a few days without rain.

after a few days without rain. Use it as a real dead (wo)man's switch to reveal your master password to your loved ones if you didn't show any signs of life in the past 14 days (some IFTTT wiring needed).

to reveal your master password to your loved ones if you didn't show any signs of life in the past 14 days (some IFTTT wiring needed). ...

Why not use icinga/nagios/...?

If you need or already have a full-fledged monitoring system, totmann is not what you want. If for whatever reason you don't want to set up a monitoring system, if you want to monitor your monitoring, if you want to connect to IFTTT as shown above, or if you just need a very simple, basic monitoring system with a nice web interface, use totmann.

Under development!

totmann is not thoroughly tested yet. If you encounter any bugs or if you want to suggest enhancements, please file a bug.

Don't trust us!

Totmann is open source software. Setup your own server!

Note that although totmann has a built-in detection for when its own cron job does not run on time, we provide totmann as a best-effort service and thus do not take any liability should totmann fail to notify you. If you want to ensure timely notifications, review the code, setup totmann on distributed servers, etc.; do not use totmann to ensure the safety of persons (that's what the original Totmannschalter is for)!