Script that will email the last few lines of error logs ..

Question

I am working on a script that:

checks if mysql and apache are running
if not, it sends an email and then attempts to restart the non-running service

I would like to add the last few lines of the error logs to the email. Here is what I have so far. The check works, the restart works, sending email works, but am not getting my error messages from the log:

#!/bin/bash
#ver. 1 

##this script will check mysql and apache
##if that service is not running
##it will start the service and send 
##an email to you

##set your email address 
EMAIL="email@yourdomain.com"

##list your services you want to check
SERVICES=(  'mysql' 'apache2' )

#### DO NOT CHANGE anything BELOW ####

 for i in "${SERVICES[@]}"
  do
    ###IF APACHE IS NOT RUNNING####
     if [[  "$(service $i status)" =~ "not"  ]]
	then
	service $i start
	MESSAGE= "$(tail -5 /var/log/$i/error.log)"
	SUBJECT="$i down on $(hostname) $(date) "
	echo "$MESSAGE   mysql" | mail -s "$SUBJECT" "$EMAIL"
     fi
    ###IF MYSQL IS NOT RUNNING####
     if [[  "$(service $i status)" =~ "stop" ]]
	then
	service $i start
	MESSAGE= "$(tail -5 /var/log/$i/error.log)"
	SUBJECT="$i down on $(hostname) $(date) "
	echo "$MESSAGE " | mail -s "$SUBJECT" "$EMAIL"
     fi
  done

Any tips on getting info from the error logs into the email? Also, my loop would be much better if all services had the same status message…I wonder if there is a better way of checking if the service is running that will return the same result for all services.

Andrew SB · Answer

For checking if the service is running or not, you could check the exit code. A well written init script should return 0 if the service is good, 1 service is dead but the /var/run pid file exists, and 3 if it is not running at all. Like: $ service apache2 status; echo $? * apache2 is running 0 $ service apache2 stop * Stopping web server apache2 $ service apache2 status; echo $? * apache2 is not running 3

Question

Script that will email the last few lines of error logs ..