I have run a number of these 'monster' processes, for example last year I converted my complete MP3 collection to a different bitrate by resampling my FLAC files, the process took 3 weeks. My assumption is always that we will have a power-cut at the worst moment, so I normally control the process with a loop like (from memory):

my $results_dir = "results";
mkdir $results_dir,0755 if(!-d $results_dir);
foreach my $next_step (list_steps())
  {
    next if(-r "$results_dir/$next_step.done");
    $res = do_step($next_step);
    my $fh = IO::File->new(">$results_dir/$next_step.done");
    print $fh $res;
    $fh->close();
  }
print "All steps done\n";

[download]

Of course I normally add the date, some other interesting details to the results files and a lot more checking

In reply to Re: running Perl scripts in the background by hawtin
in thread running Perl scripts in the background by Anonymous Monk

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