file monitoring + take action

tek1024 · 11-05-2004, 01:25 AM

I helped a guy out on a problem before and he's come back to me; I don't want to let him down. Here's what he told me he needs:

Quote:

I want to 'grep' /var/log/httpd/access_log and take an action when the word "resume" is seen. That means someone saw my resume, and it'd be cool if it could ring a bell or something.....maybe just email me with the details. Have you seen any way to do that?

The short answer to him, of course, is simply "no, I haven't," but I don't want to let him down. I'm curious myself how to do this.

I looked up File Alteration Monitor (FAM) and DNotify, as well as fileschanged. But these won't help unless I know bash scripting (I don't) or Perl (I don't). I know Java and a bit of 101-level C++, but if there's another solution to this, please let me know.

Any ideas? Thanks!

acid_kewpie · 11-05-2004, 02:10 AM

kinda depends how often he wants to do this, presumably dependent on what the "action" would be, but i'd say that nothing more than cron and bash is needed...

Code:

resume_count = `grep /var/log/httpd/access_log resume | wc -l`
if [ $resume_count -gt 0 ] then
  echo My resume was read! how cool! | mail -s Resume dave@dave.com
fi

so ***basically*** that in a cron job every few hours... mind you though, this won't stop emailing you if it's already seen it and mailed abuot a particular line... and i'm in XP at the moment, so can't realistically test it.

tek1024 · 11-18-2004, 03:13 PM

Just wanted to say thanks for the reply, never did. Have a good one!

HeWhoNeverSleep · 11-18-2004, 06:41 PM

tutds