NOTE: I am using BASH and Solaris 10 for this.

Currently in the process of building a script that has a main "watcher" daemon that reads a configuration file and starts background processes based on it's global configuration. It is basically an infinite loop of configuration reading. Some of the background processes do things like "decrypting files" and "encrypting files" all from a configuration table that is read in. Yes the sub processes have configuration files also. The idea is that the watcher process calls the sub process with an "ID" that is valid in the sub processes' configuration.

What I'm having trouble deciding on is how to deal with things like notifications via email on how the sub process finished. They run in the background from the watcher process so assuming after it's finished I can't tell the watcher what happened. These sub processes can be called without the watcher as well. E.g.

Code:

# ClientDataDecrypt 1

Where 1 is the ID from a table configuration.

My thoughts were to:
1. Have the watcher touch a stat file when it kicks off the particular subtask. The sub process can then update this. I can also use this to stop the watcher from kicking off another sub process too quickly.
2. Have the watcher pass the relevant email addresses to the sub process and let the sub process handle the notifications. There still may be an issue with spam notifications if the sub process fails on particular files.

Sorry if I have confused what I'm trying to do. Your thoughts and feedback are welcome.

---------- Post updated at 04:07 PM ---------- Previous update was at 02:42 PM ----------

Thinking further about this I'm thinking that when I kick off the sub process I have it spit to an output file:

Code:

# ClientDataEncrypt -i <id> -o <path>_<id>_<parent>.lock

Where ID is the ID in the config, <path> is the parent file path, and <parent> is the parent (watcher) process ID.

I can then from the watcher keep checking for files matching the above criteria as it parses through. The out file can have something like this to read in:

SUCCESS=
FAIL=
SOURCE_DIR=
DEST_DIR=

It can then construct a notification based on this.