I didn't exactly expect that to be a controversial node. The problem is, I keep running into people who just don't think about logging program status, or error conditions, or emitting any sort of status info at all... those are the people I wrote the node for.

On the subject of notification: cron(8) will mail any output to you (well, to $MAILTO) after each cron job. I imagine other similar facilities exist elsewhere. Provided you don't get mail from your crons on a regular basis ("Hey! I completed successfully! Isn't that great?"), mail from cron(8) is an effective error-reporting facility; you don't have to wait until an error-checking/log polishing script runs at some time in the future, you know right away when the job finishes. (Or at least the next time you check your mail.)

--
F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
The hell with paco, vote for Erudil!

In reply to Re(2): Defensive Programming and Audit Trails by FoxtrotUniform
in thread Defensive Programming and Audit Trails by FoxtrotUniform

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