Bionic Vision Lab Automations

Automations used around the lab.

ZotBot

Reads the NEW collection on Zotero via Atom feed
Determines which items are new
Posts new items on the #papers channel on Slack via webhook

Runs every 5 minutes using GitHub Actions.

DiskSentinel

DiskSentinel monitors disk usage and alerts Slack with a per-user /home or /hdd breakdown.

1. Create & Configure a Slack App

Go to https://api.slack.com/apps and click Create New App → From scratch
Name it DiskSentinel, select your workspace
Under OAuth & Permissions → Scopes, add Bot Token Scopes:
- chat:write
- channels:read
- (optional) chat:write.public if you want to post in channels without inviting the bot
Install the app to your workspace and authorize
Copy the Bot User OAuth Token (xoxb-…) and the Channel ID (e.g. C01234567)

2. Clone the repo

As sudo, clone into /etc:

cd /etc
sudo git clone https://github.com/bionicvisionlab/automations bvl-automations

Make sure the bash script is executable (it should already be):

cd bvl-automations
chmod +x disk_sentinel.sh

3. Configure the sentinel

In /etc/bvl-automations, create a file called .disk_sentinel.conf and export the following variables:

SLACK_BOT_TOKEN="xoxb-…"     # from Slack Apps
SLACK_CHANNEL_ID="C01234567" # from channel info
THRESHOLD=90                 # percentage
MOUNT_POINTS="/home /hdd"    # optional
RECOVERY_OFFSET=5            # optional, drop 5% to restore normality
RENOTIFICATION_MINUTES=240   # optional, nag every 240 mins

Then lock it down:

chmod 600 .disk_sentinel.conf

4. Add to root’s crontab

File lock: This wrapper checks if the script is already running. If it is, the new cron job simply quits immediately. disk_sentinel.log: Write output to a log file so the job doesn’t fail silently.

sudo crontab -e
# add a line to run it every 10 mins:
*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/flock -n /var/lock/disk_sentinel.lock /etc/bvl-automations/disk_sentinel.sh >> /var/log/disk_sentinel.log 2>&1