Monitoring a UNIX directory with alerting

[Jeff Daigle]

I am looking for a UNIX script that we
can use to monitor a UNIX directory. I
want to use this script via crontab. I
want the script to look for a specific
file (abc.txt) in a specific directory
(/jeff/files). If this file is there,
do nothing. If this file is not there,
alert us (using email, page, other
alerting). Is this possible?

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

via a simple ksh script using the test
variable in an if statement.
if the return code is anything other than true
you would use mailx to mail a message.
I'm sure by the end of the day you'll have a hundred elegant ways to do it.

Later,
Bill

[Andreas Voss]

Hi,

whithin a script you can check for the file with eg.:

if [ ! -f /jeff/files/abc.txt ]
then
mailx -s 'File not found'
fi

Regards

[Laurent Paumier]

if [ ! -f /jeff/files/abc.txt ]
then
mailx -s "file not found" user@host fi

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeff:

You could cron the following one-liner:

# [ -f /tmp/myfile ] && echo "alert!" |mailx -s "file present!" root

This would alert 'root' if /tmp/myfile is present.

If you want the alert to be if absent, do:

# [ -f /tmp/myfile ] || echo "alert!" |mailx -s "file present!" root

...JRF...

[Abel Berger]

Hi Jeff,

Try this :cd /jeff/files

if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
if [ -f abc.txt ]
then
mailx -s 'File found'
fi
fi
exit

I hope this help

Regards

Abel Berger

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Yes Jeff, you can. I suppose you would like to know how:

Try something close to this:

#!/usr/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/bin:${PATH}
export PATH

TARGET=/xxx/yyy/myfile
MAILTO="me@mycompany.com"

STAT=0
if [ ! -r "${TARGET}" ]
then
echo "File ${TARGET} missing." | mail ${MAILTO}
STAT=$?
fi
exit ${STAT}

Most pagers also have a SMTP interface so by changing ${MAILTO} you can also send a page.

One way to do it, Clay