Idle Whacker

What the?

Idle whacker polls a given url periodically so that the app server never goes to sleep.

How the?

Idle whacker installs a crontab entry on a given (host) machine which then uses ab (apache-bench) to generate traffic to a given URL periodically.

Installation

Idle whacker depends on ab being available on the command line. ab (apache-bench) can be installed via apt-get install apache2-utils - this is a really small util, with libreadline at its only dependency. After the gem install, you may need to run rbenv rehash based on your environment.

Usage

> idle_whacker [command]

Available commands:

install: Installs a whack
remove : Removes all installed whacks
show   : Show installed whacks
test   : Test a whack

A sample session of installing a whack

> idle_whacker install
URL to whack, eg(http://www.foobar-server.com/lazy_boy.html): http://www.nest.com/about/   #URL to poll for.
Whacker install host eg(www.foobar-server.com): www.whacker.com                            #Machine where the crontab will be installed
Username: deployer                                                                         #Login to the above install host
Password (Leave this blank if ssh keys are setup):

Installing crontab entry..
*/5 * * * * echo '[idle_whacking]' && ab -c 5 -n 25 http://www.nest.com/about/

Done.