Monitoring batches in IT environment : efficiently using emails

Sometimes automatically running scripts in production environments are simply monitored by emails. Those scripts may run on schedule or be triggered by events and they send an email (for example to the technical support level 1) upon completion of the job. The content of the email will then give information about the outcome of the execution of the script.

This posts lists a few ideas that you might find useful to implement when in such an environment.

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Linux : Taking control of Virtual Terminals (VT) from command line

When you use Linux in text mode (as opposed to with an X server), you readily have access to multiple Virtual Terminals (aka VT for short) by hitting one of your <Alt-Fn> keys (if you are running a X server, you’ll need to hit <Ctrl-Alt-Fn> simultaneously).

This lets you access one of the VTs which are initialized at boot time, but won’t let you create new ones even if your kernel configuration would allow more VTs. Furthermore, what if you want to deal with VTs from a script ?

This post covers the 3 commands which will let you control your VTs from the command line or from a script.

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