Proposal: kool task

[fabriciojs]

A recurring problem we face is running certain long running tasks over SSH. It's usual to leverage tools like tmux, screen, or the good old nohup task >> 2>&1 & or ((nohup task &)&) for detaching.

On top of simply getting it to run, another challenge is getting error/success notifications (on the same fashion as modern error tracking tools). Besides the actual output for auditing which also lacks standards on how to handle, and usually generates some noise on the filesystem.

The idea that emerges contemplates:

• Running any scripts in a detached mode, controlling their output and progress.
• Handle some alerting capacity (email/API), for failures/success.
• Handle the output in a standard and safe way.

kool task backup: backup is a script defined within kool.yml and might take long. We want this command to run safely, alert us in case of failure/success, and have the output in a way we can easily refer to it later.

[fabriciojs]

Some tech discussion on this topic:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23031752/start-a-process-in-go-and-detach-from-it
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/285015/how-to-prevent-a-background-process-from-being-stopped-after-closing-ssh-client
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43650183/keep-running-go-server-as-background-process
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39508086/golang-exec-background-process-and-get-its-pid
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/59410139/run-command-in-golang-and-detach-it-from-process

[fabriciojs]

Other than monitoring success/failure, keeping an eye out for resources consumption (CPU/memory) would be very very interesting.