How to Monitor backups

Hi again

9.2.4 on RHEL 6

I have a backup that runs by cronjob every day which is basically this:

00 19 * * *   /backup_scripts/locsng_backup.sh > /cron/locsng_backup.out 2>&1

View /backup_scripts/locsng_backup.sh:

# carry out schema only  backup of the db database
/pg_dumpall -l db -U postgres -s > /backups/pg_db_schema_backups/db_ci_schema_dump$date_of_backup.sql 2>&1

# carry out backup of db database
/pg_dump -Fc db -U postgres > /backups/pg_db_db_backups/db_ci_backup$date_of_backup

# carry out cluster wide metadata backup
/pg_dumpall -g > /backups/pg_cluster_dump/cluster_ci_medadata$date_of_backup.sql


Is there a best practise way of how to monitor this sort of backup?

 - my initial ideas are:

1. Check by cron if /cron/locsng_backup.out > 24 hours old (of course this will not work if cron fails) and if so
notifythe DBA by email? 

2. As part of the script check if cron/locsng_backup.out > 0 bytes in size (of course this will not work if cron fails)
andif so notify the DBA by email? 

3. Does pg_dump,  pg_dumpall return an error code if it is unsuccessful and can be trapped in same way and then used to
notifythe DBA by email? 


Thanks in advance

Austen


Austen Birchall  Senior Database Administrator
Met Office