Learn Linux Shell Scripting - Fundamentals of Bash 4.4

Logging script results

Running scripts on a schedule is a great way to automate repetitive tasks. There is one big consideration when doing this though: logging. Normally, when you run a command, the output will be visible to you directly. If something seems wrong, you are there behind the keyboard to investigate the issue. However, once we start using cron (and even at), we no longer see the direct output of the commands. We can only check the results once we log in, and, if we do not make arrangements, we can only look for the result of the script (for example, cleaned up log files). What we need is logging for our script, so we have a simple way to periodically verify whether our script is running successfully.