Why would a process monitoring script use exit 1; on finding no problems?
- by user568458
General question:
On a Linux (Centos) server, if a process monitoring script run by cron is set to close with exit 1; rather than exit 0; on finding that everything is okay and that no action is needed, is that a mistake?
Or are there legitimate reasons for calling exit 1; instead of exit 0; on the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition?
exit 0; on finding no problems seems to me to be more appropriate. But maybe there's something I'm not aware of. For example, maybe there's something specific to Cron? Or maybe there's a convention in process monitoring scripts that 'failure' means 'this script failed to need to fix a problem' (rather than what I would expect which is that exit 1; would mean 'the process being monitored has failed'?)
My specific case:
I'm looking at a process monitoring script written by my web hosting company. By process monitoring script, I mean a script executed by Cron on a regular basis that checks if an important system process is running, and if it isn't running, takes actions such as mailing an administrator or restarting the process.
Here's the (generalised) structure of their script, for a service running on port 8080 (in this case, Apache Tomcat):
SERVICE=$(/usr/sbin/lsof -i tcp:8080 | wc -l);
if [ $SERVICE != 0 ]; then
exit 1;
else
#take action
fi
Seems simple enough even for someone with limited knowledge like me, except the exit 1; part seems odd. As I understand it, exit 0; closes a program and signifies to the parent that executed the program that everything is fine, exit n; where n0 and n<127 signifies that there has been some kind of error or problem.
Here, their script seems to go against that rule - it calls exit 1; in the condition where everything is fine, and doesn't exit after taking remedial action in the problem condition.
To me, this looks like a mistake - but my experience in this area is limited. Are there cases where calling exit 1; in the "Everything's fine, no action needed" condition is more appropriate than calling exit 0;? Or is it a mistake?
Wider context is pretty simple. It's a Centos VPS, running Plesk. The script is being called by Cron via Plesk's "Scheduled tasks" Cron manager. There's no custom layer between Cron and this script that would respond in an unusual way to the exit call. It's a fairly average, almost out-of-the box Plesk-managed Centos VPS (in so far as there is such a thing). The process being monitored by this script is Apache Tomcat.
