On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:17:31 +1300 Andrew Errington <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hello, > > I have a "style" question regarding a process that I wish to run all the > time. > > Basically, my weather data collection comprises two programs. One is a > program to query the temperature sensor. The other is a Perl script to > query the wind sensor. Both programs output to a text file, then a cron > job generates graphs from the data in the text file. > > At the moment I have the programs running in two terminal windows. I want > to automate them so they will: I am thinking that these programs probably do nt need to run continuously anyway. i assume they are doing something like: begin poll sensor write data sleep x minutes again would it be better to rewrite the program to just do: begin poll sensor write data end then let cron do the scheduling every x minutes. that way as long as cron is running, your data collection program should run. if the data collection program outputs a value indicating whether or not it has finished successfuly, you can get cron to send you an email on failure. just another option... > > a) Run automatically when the server is rebooted (with a current uptime of > 228 days I am loathe to test that...) > b) Restart automatically if they ever stop running > > I am sure there are a number of common techniques for this, but is there a > 'best' one? Should the programs run as root, or run as me? > > A simple solution might be to run a cron job every hour that checks whether > the process is running, and if not, starts it up. That can be set up by > me, and therefore the process runs as me, and covers both situations above. > If the process runs as root then I need to be root to kill it if I ever > want to change it. > > Any clues? > > Thanks, > > Andy -- Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
