Monitor Your Server and Receive an Email Report Every Minute Using Python and Cron (Amazon Linux)

Merdi Lukongo — Fri, 16 May 2025 12:01:01 +0000

Introduction
Monitoring your server's health in real time is essential to prevent issues before they escalate. In this article, we’ll create a Python script that:

collects system data: memory, CPU, and disk usage,
sends a performance report by email every minute to a system administrator,
runs automatically on an Amazon EC2 instance using cron.

Prerequisites
Before we start, make sure you have:
An Amazon EC2 instance running Amazon Linux 2
Python 3 installed (python3 --version)

A Gmail account with two-factor authentication enabled
An app password generated (explained below)

The Python Monitoring Script
Create a file called monitoring.py:

!/usr/bin/env python3

import psutil
import shutil
import smtplib
import os
from email.message import EmailMessage

Collect system stats

cpu_percent = psutil.cpu_percent(interval=1)
memory = psutil.virtual_memory()
disk = shutil.disk_usage("/")

Format the message

message = f"""
[Server Monitoring Report]

CPU Usage: {cpu_percent}%
Memory Usage: {memory.percent}%
Available Storage: {disk.free // (2*30)} GB / {disk.total // (2*30)} GB
"""

Email setup

email = EmailMessage()
email.set_content(message)
email["Subject"] = "Server Performance Report"
email["From"] = os.getenv("EMAIL_SENDER")
email["To"] = "testemail@gmail.com"

Send the email

with smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", 465) as smtp:
smtp.login(os.getenv("EMAIL_SENDER"), os.getenv("EMAIL_PASSWORD"))
smtp.send_message(email)
🔒 Secure Your Credentials with Environment Variables
Never hard-code your credentials into your scripts. Instead, add them to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile:

export EMAIL_SENDER="your.email@gmail.com"
export EMAIL_PASSWORD="your_app_password"

Then reload the file:

Automate with Cron

Install Cron (if not already installed):

sudo yum install cronie -y
sudo systemctl start crond
sudo systemctl enable crond

Create a Cron Job

Edit your crontab:
crontab -e

Add the following line to run the script every minute:

* * * * /usr/bin/python3 /home/ec2-user/monitoring.py Adjust the path as necessary.

Output
Every minute, you’ll receive an email like this:

[Server Monitoring Report]
CPU Usage: 12.3%
Memory Usage: 55.7%
Available Storage: 19 GB / 40 GB

Conclusion

With this simple project, you’ve learned how to:

monitor a server using Python, send emails programmatically using SMTP, automate tasks with cron on Amazon Linux. This script can easily be extended to alert you when thresholds are exceeded, monitor multiple servers, or log performance stats to a database.

Enable Versioning on an S3 Bucket and Never Lose a File Again

Merdi Lukongo — Thu, 15 May 2025 04:42:57 +0000

Introduction

Have you ever accidentally overwritten or deleted a file in AWS S3? Don't worry - there's a simple feature to save you: S3 Versioning.
In this quick tutorial, I'll show you how to enable versioning on a bucket, test it by uploading multiple versions of the same file, and view or restore previous versions - all for free.

Prerequisites

An AWS account (Free Tier)
A test file (e.g., test.txt)

Step-by-Step

Create an S3 Bucket Go to the Amazon S3 console

Click "Create bucket

Click "Create bucket"

Choose a unique name (e.g., my-versioning-demo-bucket)

Leave all other settings as default
Click "Create bucket

Enable Versioning Open your newly created bucket

Go to the Properties tab

Scroll down to Bucket Versioning

Upload a File
Go to the Objects tab
Click Upload
What You Get
You've now enabled automatic version tracking for your S3 bucket.
Each time you upload a file with the same name, S3 silently keeps the old version - no backup scripts needed.
Why Use S3 Versioning?

🔁 Restore files deleted or overwritten by mistake
🕓 Roll back to a known good version
🧪 Test changes without fear of data loss

Conclusion
S3 Versioning is a hidden gem that acts like a built-in time machine for your files. Whether you're building apps or hosting a static website, it's a simple and powerful way to stay safe.