
Ask HN: How do you get notifications if something doesn't happen? - jjeaff
I have searched high and low for a service and I could have sworn I saw a solution on HN but I cannot find it.<p>In particular I am looking for a solution that can notify me if my hourly backups were NOT completed.<p>What I have come up with is a script that checks the modified timestamp of my backup file and then checks if it is older than 1 hour. If it is, then the script returns 200 success headers. If it doesn&#x27;t then it returns a 404.<p>I am then monitoring that page with an uptime monitoring service.<p>I&#x27;m curious what everyone else does and how well it works for you.
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bramgn
If this is a Unix-like environment, have you thought about running a cron job
that runs your script and decides to send a message based on the results?

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jjeaff
Yes, I have. But I think the job never running at all is the problem I am
trying to avoid. If the cron didn't fire or if the entire command just failed,
or if maybe the server was offline when the cron was supposed to fire, a check
after the job is finished would never happen.

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bramgn
Then i think the solution you came up with is pretty good for your situation.
If this external service is stable, of course.

