This project uses AWS Simple Notification Service to push SMS to mobile devices.
To use this service, you will need an AWS account. The first 100 messages sent in the month are free, and additional SMS pushes are charged per message for all networks. (See SMS pricing on the AWS documentation).
For a working backup system, expect to receive around 4-5 texts per month containing the weekly summary of backups. If you believe you will receive more than 100 messages, consider paying for a higher tier service from AWS.
If you are planning on sending messages to only 1 phone number, skip steps 2 and 3. You will provide a single phone number in the configuration file in step 4.
The suggested mechanism for generating these credentials is to create a new
programmatic access IAM user that you use to generate an Access key ID
and
Secret access key
. Alternative you can generate these credentials using a
different IAM user that already has SNS permission, or you can create a new web
console IAM user and then generate an 'Access Key' for that user.
- Login to AWS web console as a user with permission to create new IAM accounts
- Navigate to the IAM section
- Click 'Add user', define a User name, and select 'Programmatic access' as the 'Access type'
- On the permissions screen, select 'Attach existing policies directly'
- Search for and select
AmazonSNSRole
to apply to the account - Review and create the user
- Do not forget to enter the
Secret access key
on the final screen into youralcove.ini
config file as there is no other way to retrieve that key once the screen has been closed.
This can be done from the SNS dashboard. Create a topic with an appropriate topic name and display name. This will generate Amazon Resource Name (ARN) which you can view under Topics.
For each phone number you would like to receive messages, you need to create a subscription to the topic you have created. You can do so by going to the Subscriptions page and creating subscriptions to the topic by using the topic ARN. The protocol should be 'SMS'.
If you only want to send to a single phone number, skip this step and simply
enter the number in the sms_to
field of the config using the E.164 format.
-
In
alcove.ini
, thenotifications.sms
section should contain ansms_to
field with the topic ARN OR a single phone number if you only want to send messages to one numberThe phone number or ARN need to be surrounded by "" (double quotes)
-
The config file also should include the
aws_region
,access_key
, andsecret_key
SMS notifications will not be enabled unless all 4 values are specified