Environment Overseer

This small Python script allows one to execute arbitrary scripts based on environment conditions.

Goal of this project is to limit my own procrastination.

Example Setup:

• Script scripts/managers/youtube reports seeing YouTube requests in Pi-hole's log
• Overseer will consider the activity YouTube as enabled, tracking the time it has spent enabled
• After YouTube's limit was reached, Overseer will execute scripts/disable/youtube and consider YouTube disabled

See this repo's examples for my own config files ( THEY ARE NOT DROP IN SCRIPTS. Most of them use either my docker setup or my nickname, they are just that - examples )

Features

• Rich possibilities for monitors, extensions, managers
• Manual enabling / disabling activities
• Automatic tracking of time spent on addiction prone sites
• Automatic enabling / disabling activities based on time of day
• Automatic enabling / disabling activities based on time spent
• Checks and balances to make sure Overseer isn't tampered with

Hardness

Thanks to multiple checks and hashsums, Overseer is pretty hardened out of the box. I have not found a trivial way how to cheat yet.

Some even more hardnening tips:

• Make sure Overseer's unit has RefuseManualStop=true
• Make sure you have checks scripts for existing activities
  • Purpose of checks scripts is to get tripped when user tries to go over Overseer's head
  • e.g. a checks/youtube would check if YouTube is actually blocked
  • checks scripts are not neccessary but provide another level of safety against your lazy self

Usage

overseer: Start main daemon of the app
overseer --forbidreset: Start main daemon of the app, but also forces the app to ignore reset requests
overseer --enable <activity>: Manually enables an activity
overseer --disable <activity>: Manually disables an activity
overseer --reset: Resets trackers for all activities (does nothing if daemon has -f)
overseer --list: Prints currently active activities
overseer --prepare: Prepares Overseer's file structure
overseer --tick: Notifies Overseer of an update
overseer --stop: Gracefully stops Overseer

Testing

To make sure Overseer works, you can do

git clone https://github.com/richard-hajek/environment-overseer.git
cd environment-overseer
sudo docker-compose up

This will run end-to-end tests stored in test/routine.sh

Installation & Configuration

To install Overseer and to configure it, please head over to Overseer Wiki for configuration guide and examples.