I am developing a script that monitors directory sizes. The script send emails and pages when certain percentage thresholds are reached. My question is: how to implement functionality to stop paging and sending email after 3 times. The script will run via a cron job every 15 mins. #!/bin/ksh # This script monitors directory size and emails/pages support personnel when certain threshold sizes are exceeded. host=`/bin/hostname` sysdate=`/bin/date` COM_DIR=/home/commun PG_SENT_FILE=${COM_DIR}/pg_sent_file COM_FILE=${COM_DIR}/comm_file LOG_DIR=/home/logs LOG=${LOG_DIR}/monitor.log #var=`df /var | tail -1 | tr -s ' ' ' ' | cut -d' ' -f4 | cut -d'%' -f1` title1="is > 95%" title2="is > 90%" title3="is > 85%" title4="is > 80%" #Remove any old temporary files rm -f ${LOG}*.tmp #Keep one copy of the previous log file if [[ -f ${LOG} ]] then mv -f ${LOG} ${LOG}.old 2>${LOG}.$$.tmp if (( $? !=0 )) then exit 1 fi rm -f ${LOG}.$$.tmp fi . ${COM_FILE} . ${PG_SENT_FILE} function check { dir=$1 per=`df -k ${dir} | tail -1 | tr -s ' ' ' ' | cut -d' ' -f4 | cut -d'%' -f1`; if [ ${per} -ge 95 ] then echo "\n**PROBLEM DIRECTORY IS ${dir} **" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" | mailx -s "Alert! ${dir} on ${host} ${title1}" "${MAIL_LIST[*]}" "${PIN_LIST[*]}" 2>> ${LOG} if (( $? !=0 )) then exit 1 fi return 0 fi if [ ${per} -ge 90 ] then echo "\nPROBLEM DIRECTORY IS ${dir} **" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" | mailx -s "Alert! ${dir} on ${host} ${title2}" "${MAIL_LIST[*]}" "${PIN_LIST[*]}" 2>> ${LOG} if (( $? !=0 )) then exit 1 fi return 0 fi if [ ${per} -ge 85 ] then echo "\n**PROBLEM DIRECTORY IS ${dir} **" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" | mailx -s "Alert! ${dir} on ${host} ${title3}" "${MAIL_LIST[*]}" 2>> ${LOG} if (( $? !=0 )) then exit 1 fi return 0 fi if [ ${per} -ge 80 ] then echo "\n**PROBLEM DIRECTORY IS ${dir} **" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" >> ${LOG} echo "`df -k ${dir}`" | mailx -s "Alert! ${dir} on ${host} ${title4}" "${MAIL_LIST[*]}" 2>> ${LOG} if (( $? !=0 )) then exit 1 fi return 0 fi } status=0 echo "\n ${sysdate}" >> ${LOG} check "/var"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/tmp"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/home"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/logs"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/cddata"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi check "/production"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi for i in `ls /logs` do check "/logs/$i"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi done for j in `ls /cddata` do check "/cddata/$j"; if (( $? !=0 )) then ${status}=1 fi done if [ "${status}" = 1 ] then mailx -s "Error in threshold monitor script" "${MAIL_LIST[*]}" if (( $? !=0 )) then echo "Email notification of script failure unsuccessful-writing to log." >> ${LOG} fi fi exit 0

I'd suggest keeping the number of emails/pages sent in a file. When you run this script, if no page is sent, you write the number zero to the file. If a page is sent, you read the file's current number, increment it and write it back to the file. A couple of questions to answer: 1-when do I read this number? If I read it and it's already three, do I want to do the check anyway or do I want to just abort the script? 2-once the threshold is reached, then how do I handle things? You might do something like: -if a problem is found and count >3 and ((count-3) % 8 != 0) (meaning it's less than two hours since last page), then increment count but don't page -if a problem is found and count >3 and ((count-3) %8 == 0) (it's been two hours since last page), then increment and page (or maybe page someone else) Lotsa possibilities

1-Read the number of pages sent already before function check is run. Abort the script if #of pages sent already is 3. 2-Once the threshold is reached email and pages are sent to a list of people. I'm having the most difficulty with developing the syntax of the code which writes out to a file and increments by 1 each time a threshold is reached.