[Spong-users] check_processes change

[Stephen C. <sca...@us...>]

OK, 

I am just getting started on this, so I have no code yet, but expect a 
patch to be sent to the list within the next couple of days.

It is my intention to extend the "jobs" status light to include well,
batch jobs. Makes sense huh? 

The main reason for the heads up is, I think the check_processes module
should be renamed to check_jobs for the following reasons:

1) The "status collumn" that it controls in the spong display is called
   "jobs" - to make "what controlls what" more evident, this makes sense.

2) The new checks I am adding make more sense being called "jobs" than 
   "processes" because we care IF they ran, not whether they are still 
   running.

So unless someone objects loudly, I am going to rename my check_processes
file and all references to that name to check_jobs and will submit those
changes with my patch, when its ready.

The basic idea that I have ATM is to make a directory of files. The files
will have their time stamps checked. If the time stamp is too old, then
the status goes yellow or red (based on thresholds set in the spong config,
possibly overrided by the contrnsts of the files? in any case it HAS to be
setable on a job by job basis)

Anyway, thats the idea. We really need it here, and I figure it will be
usefull to anyone else who has periodic jobs running that fail in 
interesting ways on an irregular basis.

I am also thinking of abstracting this into a perl module, on the job end, 
so that its simply "include this perl module and call this couple of wrapper
routines and it reports the job status to spong" (that way the backend of how
it works can be changed independantly of all the scripts - of course then
a couple of perl scripts could serve as command line wrappers so that shell
scripts can use it too!)

Ok... I think I have a more solid idea now :) expect code in a couple of days.
Comments? Suggestions? Flames?

-Steve
-- 
"The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas 
Instruments. "
                -- PBS