2023 Update

With the number of changes since Twitter is under new ownership I’m not sure this can still work.

I’ve been using Nagios to monitor servers and devices for years now. Lately as an exercise to learn more about nagios I installed a private instance that I use to monitor everything I can think of - from my personal servers to the number of hours we watch TV.

A nice use I found is to monitor the number of followers my twitter bots and personal account have. For that I wrote a custom plugin, available in my small repository of plugins at: https://github.com/filviu/nagios-plugins

The plugin pulls the number from the public site - no API access required. Since the data is not changing frequently you could use a custom setting to check less often. My entry looks like this:

define host {
    use                      linux-server
    host_name                twitter
    alias                    twitter
    address                  twitter.com
}

define service {
    use                      local-service,graphed-service         ; Name of service template to use
    host_name                twitter
    service_description      Twitter followers: @rtjolla
    normal_check_interval    60                    ; check hourly
    check_command            check_twitterfollowers!rtjolla
}

This creates a host named twitter, and graphs (provided you have nagiosgrapher up and running) the number of followers. Of course you have to install the plugin and create a custom command for it. Mine looks like this:

    define command{
    command_name check_twitterfollowers
    command_line $USER1$/check_twitterfollowers.sh -u $ARG1$
}