You may want to look at setting up spong It is written in perl, distributed under the Perl Artistic Liscense. Spong is from their faq:

1. What is Spong?
This is a simple system monitoring package called spong. It has the following features:
client based monitoring (CPU, disk, processes, logs, etc...)
monitoring of network services (smtp, http, ping, pop, dns, etc...)
grouping of hosts (routers, servers, workstations, PCs)
rules based messaging when problems occur
configurable on a host by host basis
results displayed via text or web based interface
history of problems
verbose information to help diagnosis problems

It may be a little overkill, but it will do what you want it to do and is very easy to set up.

"The social dynamics of the net are a direct consequence of the fact that nobody has yet developed a Remote Strangulation Protocol." -- Larry Wall