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Ask HN: How do you get notifications if something doesn't happen?

4 points by jjeaff ↗ HN
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.

In particular I am looking for a solution that can notify me if my hourly backups were NOT completed.

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't then it returns a 404.

I am then monitoring that page with an uptime monitoring service.

I'm curious what everyone else does and how well it works for you.

3 comments

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