+++
title = 'New Tool: Mizule'
date = 2020-01-17T23:01:00-05:00
+++

I want to do better about switching out the BURP backup disks, so I need
something to remind me.  A calendar event might work, but if I forget to do it
on the day it's scheduled, I won't get another reminder until the next
scheduled date.

I decided to write a simple program that checks the UUID of the filesystem
mounted at /var/spool/burp and generates a notification if it has not changed
for some time.  This way, if I forget to do it on the scheduled date, it will
keep reminding me until I do.

I wrote the tool in Rust, because it is very simple and I have been looking
for a project to help me get motivated to learn Rust more.  It took about 12
hours start-to-finish.

Aside from my lack of familiarity with Rust, probably the most difficult part
of the project was getting it to reliably send email notifications!  At some
point, I realized that `nullmailer` wasn't running on my desktop, and hadn't
been for *quite* some time!  When I started it up, it had so many messages
queued up (from cron, etc.), that Protonmail put a rate limit on my email
account!  This made it difficult to test Mizule's email capability, since I
couldn't actually see the messages it was sending, only that it had sent
something according to the Postfix logs.

I am going to look into some other options for sending push notifications.  So
far, I have found [Firebase Cloud Messaging][0], Google's "offical" push
notification solution, which naturally requires a Google account, Google
Services Framework, et. al.  I also found [Gotify][1], which just uses a
WebSocket.  There is also [notify.run][2], which uses the Web Push API (browser
based), and [signald][3], which sends messages to Signal.  XMPP may be an option
as well.

[0]: https://firebase.google.com/docs/cloud-messaging/
[1]: https://gotify.net/
[2]: https://notify.run/
[3]: https://gitlab.com/thefinn93/signald