[ILUG] Email -> SMS gateway

[Colm Buckley]

> Does anybody know is it possible to programmatically send an email
> to an SMS gateway/phone from Linux? What I'm thinking of is
> something like a monitoring daemon that waits for (say) httpd to
> fall over and then sends an SMS to the net admin. I've tried to
> construct requests some of the free SMS services (like Lycos) but no
> luck. Has anybody done this?

A couple of ways of doing this:

1) Set up a system with a cable to a GSM phones.  The "gnokii" package
   and something like a Nokia 6150 would work very well, but it relies
   on the phone being kept charged, and having a good signal.  (We
   considered this, but Worldcom's colocation building, where we'd
   want to use the service, seems almost impervious to 900MHz
   signals).

2) Use a PCCARD GSM phone.  Nokia do one.  I don't know what the
   situation is regarding software support for these under Linux, and
   of course you still have the "having a good signal" problem.

3) Use an Email-SMS provider.  We use go2mobile.com (which is a
   service of Skycom in Limerick) for this, and we've found them
   inexpensive with good service.

4) Try to hack something up around one of the free services.  There's
   no reason in principle that this wouldn't work, except that you're
   relying on a 'provided as-is' service to do something it wasn't
   really intended for.

I recommend #3, unless you're really strapped for cash.

            Colm

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Colm Buckley BA BF | NewWorld Commerce, 44 Westland Row, Dublin 2, Ireland
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