
Background Job Processing for Atheists - laserlemon
http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2013/11/14/background-job-monitoring-for-atheists/
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mtdewcmu
Unix is polytheistic and depends extensively on unseen deities, called
daemons, so atheism is not strictly possible. The init[1] daemon is the first
daemon which is begat directly by the kernel and it creates daemons for other
purposes and when they die, it creates them again. Daemons usually contact you
with syslog and can send you email also. Since init is the parent or ancestor
of all other daemons and user processes, it's always process 1. Since daemons
are required and contact with the unseen is common, there aren't really
atheists in unix. Loyalty to one daemon isn't required, though.

The init daemon is the traditional source of immortality and overseer in Unix,
so you may want to make an offering to this daemon or recite its spells. But
there may be other daemons that could offer you more features.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init)

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recuter
This makes me ponder what happens when init itself fails. This is probably a
silly question.

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mtdewcmu
It's a good question. I was wondering that myself when I was writing the
comment. Either the kernel would have to restart it or it would bring down the
system, because no other process would have a parent.

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kijin
"Dead Man's Snitch" is a mouthful. If you'd like an alternative to God, what
about Santa?

    
    
       He sees you when you're sleeping
       He knows when you're awake...

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orenmazor
Wait. Santa's not real?

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orenmazor
I like this idea. its the push version of the traditional uptime monitoring
pull mechanism (i.e. ping endpoints).

not sure I'm a fan of using this specifically for background jobs though, as
we have airbrake and splunk and other tools that detect these failures
cheaply.

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laserlemon
Thanks. Quick and dirty is the key. And Airbrake is great for failures, but
does it support uptime monitoring like Dead Man's Snitch does?

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orenmazor
no, but I dont care if it's up as long as its not down :)

which, of course, leaves me hanging if the job queue is just not running, but
thats monitored with runit which will issue an error if the service fails to
start.

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gyom
The idea is cool. I wish there was a middle ground between 1 snitch for free,
and unlimited snitches for $20/month.

How many snitches should I get for $1/month, say ?

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lsv1
This is fantastic. Firebase.js is spectacular.

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jbverschoor
Ah! I was just thinking of this last week.

