TIP: Are we there yet? Having a command notify you when its done
by daven on Jan.19, 2008, under Quick Tips
Sometimes you have a long running process and rather than check up on it periodically you would just rather have it notify you. From the command line this is really simple you can have it email you using the mail command.
% ps auxww ; echo "ps done" | mail -s "ps done" me@example.com
This will just email you “ps done”, now suppose you want the output of the command do
% ps auxww | mail -s "ps done" me@example.com
this will include the the output of the command in the body of the email message
% time ps auxww | mail -s "ps done" me@example.com
and finally include the bash command time before the command you will get the exact amount of time it took to run included at the bottom of the e-mail.
By piping to mail you can get a bit of piece of mind not needing to constantly check on you process and with the right options even get the output and the exact run time.
