UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I want to run a script that pages me when i certain error occurs in a file, how do i page in crontab?

is your script run via crontab?

you have a couple of options.

1) you can write a wrapper script to check the exit status of your script and mail you if it fails.

or

2) provided there is no output just pipe the stdout from your crontab entry to your email/pager for that script.

how to automaticly send email has been posted time and time again. so please use the search utility. useing keywords like email, mailx, mail, crontab

it is wiser to have it sent to email vs. a pager or cell phone. it can rack up quite a large bill if something goes wrong. i have seen corp phone bills in the hundreds due to 1 script haveing an error and pageing the phone over and over.

Wow, I hadn't even thought of that possibility when I first read this post. That'd be a really bad day to be the programmer who made the script...