Shell Programming and Scripting

All,

I have a shell script which parses the /var/adm/messages file for errors every 15 minutes as a cron job. The script runs at 01, 16, 31, and 46 minutes every hour. The problem is if the error is encountered any time during the beginning of hour I can get paged three times. I would like to find a way to take the current time and subtract the previous time interval (for example 15 minutes) to read only the messages from this time. This way I would only get paged once. Any suggestions to improve the shell script are appreciated.

Thanks,

Mike

Here is the shell script:

#!/bin/sh
#
# Script to read the /var/adm/messages file for errors.
#
# Environment variables
#
LOGFILE=/sysadmin/varmessages.log
OLDLOGFILE=/sysadmin/varmessages.old.log
MESSAGES=/var/adm/messages
MESSAGEALERT=/sysadmin/varmessagealart.txt

CURMONTH=`date +%m`
CURDAY=`date +%d`
CURYEAR=`date +%Y`

# Convert numeric month to character for today's month.
case $CURMONTH in
1|01) CURMONTH=Jan;;
2|02) CURMONTH=Feb;;
3|03) CURMONTH=Mar;;
4|04) CURMONTH=Apr;;
5|05) CURMONTH=May;;
6|06) CURMONTH=Jun;;
7|07) CURMONTH=Jul;;
8|08) CURMONTH=Aug;;
9|09) CURMONTH=Sep;;
10) CURMONTH=Oct;;
11) CURMONTH=Nov;;
12) CURMONTH=Dec;;
esac

# Remove leading zeros from today's day.
case $CURDAY in
01) CURDAY=1;;
02) CURDAY=2;;
03) CURDAY=3;;
04) CURDAY=4;;
05) CURDAY=5;;
06) CURDAY=6;;
07) CURDAY=7;;
08) CURDAY=8;;
09) CURDAY=9;;
esac

# Get current hour for today.
#
THOUR=`date +%T | awk -F: '{ print $1 }'`

# If the hour is less than 10, add a leading zero to hour.
HOUR=$THOUR
case $i in
0) HOUR=00;;
1) HOUR=01;;
2) HOUR=02;;
3) HOUR=03;;
4) HOUR=04;;
5) HOUR=05;;
6) HOUR=06;;
7) HOUR=07;;
8) HOUR=08;;
9) HOUR=09;;
esac

# Remove log file if the file exists
if [ -f $LOGFILE ] ; then
rm $LOGFILE
fi

# Remove old log file if the file exists
if [ -f $OLDLOGFILE ] ; then
rm $OLDLOGFILE
fi

# Loop through lines in the MESSAGEALERT text file and grep for
# line in the MESSAGES text file. If the line is found at least
# once and it has not been reported, then place in log file.
while LINE="`line`"
do
ALERT=`grep -c "$LINE" $MESSAGES`

# grep for alerts in the current hour
if [ $CURDAY -lt 10 ] ; then
cat $MESSAGES | grep "$CURMONTH $CURDAY $HOUR" | grep "$LINE" >> $LOGFILE
else
cat $MESSAGES | grep "$CURMONTH $CURDAY $HOUR" | grep "$LINE" >> $LOGFILE
fi

done < $MESSAGEALERT

# Loop through lines in the MESSAGEALERT text file and grep for
# line in the MESSAGES text file. If the line is found at least
# once and it has not been reported, then place in log file.
while LINE="`line`"
do
ALERT=`grep -c "$LINE" $LOGFILE`

# grep for alerts in the current hour and send page from /etc/aliases alias
if [ $ALERT -ge 1 ] ; then
echo "$LINE" >> $OLDLOGFILE
echo "$LINE" | mailx -s "`uname -n` system messages alert" pager
fi

done < $MESSAGEALERT

exit 0

The /sysadmin/varmessagealart.txt has the following text to parse for:
Media Error
Memory Error
Hardware Error
SCSI bus reset

Can we run this script by sleeping for 15 minutes and check the log
instead of running as cron job.

If you run it as script and maintain a flag variable.If page is sent set the flag as "SENT". In the next hout reset the flag to BLANK.

Command we tried using to grep ERROR from lastest 1 log files from 5 logs files available in that particular directory is:
grep ERROR 'ls -ltr | tail -1'

but this command is not working.. for me its saying.. cannot open DistributeImageFilesToTarget_10_dataLocations_PhillipinesDataLocations.xml.log

if i give ls -lrt for all the files in that diretory

-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 5022 Apr 2 05:13 DistributeDataFilesToTarget_4_dataLocations_ChinaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 1672 Apr 2 05:14 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_14_dataLocations_WHQDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 7480 Apr 2 05:15 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_60_dataLocations_IndonesiaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 2113 Apr 2 05:34 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_8_dataLocations_MalaysiaDataLocations.xml.log
-------r-- 1 egdevbb intdev 2107 Apr 2 05:39 DistributeImageFilesToTarget_10_dataLocations_PhillipinesDataLocations.xml.log