Scout is an easy-to-use hosted server monitoring service. The scout Ruby gem reports metrics to our service. The agent runs plugins, configured via the Scout web interface, to monitor a server. View a list of available plugins on our website and their source on Github.

Scout requires Ruby, and is installed via Ruby Gems:

$ gem install scout

$ scout KEY

KEY is the identification key assigned by your account at http://scoutapp.com. When run from the command line, scout should print "success." If not, run in verbose mode to see what the problem is:

$ scout KEY -v

After you've successfully run Scout from the command line, you should configure it to run every minute via cron. This is how Scout is designed to run on an ongoing basis. Your contab will typically look like this:

* * * * *  deploy /usr/bin/scout KEY

... assuming you are using the global crontab, and "deploy" is the user running Scout.

$ scout --help

The scout troubleshoot command provides useful troubleshooting information (log of the last run, environment information, and the list of gems).

Extensive help is available via our website (http://scoutapp.com) and while installing the agent via the Scout web UI.

$ scout [OPTIONS] test PATH_TO_PLUGIN [PLUGIN_OPTIONS]

PATH_TO_PLUGIN is the file system path to a Ruby file that contains a Scout plugin.

PLUGIN_OPTIONS are one or more options in the form:

key1=val1 key2=val2

These options will be used for the plugin run. Lean more about creating your own plugins.

Contact [email protected] with questions.

Primary maintainers: Andre Lewis ([email protected]) and Derek Haynes ([email protected])

Many thanks to James Edward Gray II, Charles Brian Quinn, and Matt Todd for early work on the Scout agent!