We’ve been joking for a while about how we need a big red flashing light to be triggered by nagios alarms. I’m not going to do it right now, but I thought about it.

There’s a debian x10 package for controlling x10 modules. Get a big rotating red light that runs on AC. Plug it into an X10 lamp module. I can’t find a “CP-290” module which is what the x10 package calls for. You could use this Powerlinc Serial/TW523 controller. It has source available, so you could figure out the protocol if it wasn’t compatible. Then write a script and keep it running (or cron) to do something like ‘/usr/sbin/nagios2stats -m -d NUMSVCPROB,NUMHSTPROB’ which prints out the number of service and host problems. If either of those are > 0, use the x10 module to turn the light on.