Re: [gentoo-user] Disable fcron logging

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 21 Aug 2010, at 14:25, Alex Schuster wrote:
> ...
> I want to monitor the power status of my hard drives, so I wrote a  
> little
> script that gives me this output:
>
> sda: standby
> sdb: standby
> sdc: active/idle 32°C
> sdd: active/idle 37°C
>
> This script is called every minute via an fcron entry, output goes  
> into a
> log file, and I use the file monitor plasmoid to watch this log file  
> in
> KDE.
>
> It's working fine, but  also monitor my syslog in another file monitor
> plamoid, and now I get lots of these entries:
>
> Aug 21 14:21:06 [fcron] pam_unix(fcron:session): session opened for  
> user root by (uid=0)
> Aug 21 14:21:06 [fcron] Job /usr/local/sbin/hdstate >> /var/log/ 
> hdstate started for user root (pid 24483)
> Aug 21 14:21:08 [fcron] Job /usr/local/sbin/hdstate >> /var/log/ 
> hdstate completed
> Aug 21 14:21:08 [fcron] pam_unix(fcron:session): session closed for  
> user root


#!/bin/bash
while true
do
   for drive in a b c d
   do
      /usr/sbin/smartctl /dev/sd$drive --whatever >> /var/log/hdstate
   done
sleep 60
done


I would personally update more often than this, and my concern would  
be that if the process fails then your plasmoid isn't showing the  
correct data.

I presume this is the same with your current setup: if cron dies then  
the current temperature will not be read to file, and the plasmoid  
will continue reading the last lines in /var/log/hdstate - the drive  
can overheat without you knowing about it.

So I would expect there to be a better "plasmid" for this task. I'm  
completely unfamiliar with plasmids, but what you really want is a  
plasmid that itself runs a script and displays the stdout on your  
screen. That way if there's no data, or an error, then _you see that  
in the plasmid_, instead of silently ignoring it (as you may be at  
present).

The easiest (but dumb) way to handle this is to add the date to your  
plasmid's display so that at least you can see that something's wrong  
if it doesn't match the clock. A better way is not to have to watch a  
status monitor at all, and just have a script running that emails you  
if the temperature is above a specified range.

Stroller.