Both of these systems allow you to write plug-ins (read short scripts) that check on anything you want them to. These plug-ins send status messages to the server, which updates a central repository of status information. The server will then notify you if critical status items are missing or broken.

-Blake

I agree with blakem. I currently use Big Brother and write external plugins (most in Perl) to report to the central server. You may also want to take a look at Spong, which is a perl-based derivative of Big Brother.

Dave

I like the idea of integrating the agent into your program: then you could possibly return "meaningful" information to your "monitoring machine" and possibly even generate SNMP traps if an interesting event occurs. You could then have a program to restart it if it dies*.

Of course, if the monitoring machine is browser-based, I'd use an agent that works that way, although there is Apache::WebSNMP if you want to talk to an SNMP agent via a web interface...

* If you fork() a child process, wait blocks until it dies. This is what system does as in nardo's example. On some platforms (e.g. *nix) you can arrange to have a signal sent to your process when a child dies, so you can do something else while the child is doing its work.

HTH, --traveler

--
Tatsuhiko Miyagawa
miyagawa@cpan.org

#!/bin/sh

while true
do
/path/to/program
done
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl

while(1)
 {
   system('/path/to/program');
 }
[download]