Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi!

I have a simple script i call, and i use CRON to run the script daily between 7 and 8 o'clock. The cron runs 4 times a day between 7 and 8.

The code is simple:

if <script ran successfully>
do something
else
try again later, with the next time cron runs.
BUT If the script failed for the FOURTH time then send mail to admin that this day the script didnt succeed
fi

i am not good at unix or scripting, but ive managed to code everything besides how to gather information that the script has failed four times and its time to send mail. Is this possible by allocating a variable and keeping the state of the variable?

Hopefully there is a easy solution to this problem.

Thanx for your help.

...twice via pipe, if the answer is noooo-ooo! (apologies to Tony Orlando and Dawn, and any readers...)

Sure, it's doable:

$CHECKF="/tmp/runcount" # whatever you want
if [ `date | awk '{print $2 $3}'` = `ls -l $CHECKF | awk '{print $6 $7}'` ] ; then # it ran today
if [ `cat $CHECKF` = "0" ] ; then # it ran successfully
exit # so don't run it again.
fi

<run your script>

if <script ran successfully> ; then echo "0" > $CHECKF ; exit; fi

Now here's what happens if you have a problem:

i=`cat $CHECKF`
i=`expr $i + 1`
if expr $i -gt 3` ; then
echo "Script $0 failed 4 times!" | mailx -s "Failure on `date`" recipient
exit 1
fi
echo $i > $CHECKF