Automating Linux system maintenance tasks with Shell scripting

If a system administrator spends a lot of time solving problems and doing repetitive work, you should wonder if he is doing the right thing. An efficient system administrator should make a plan to spend as little time as possible on repetitive tasks. So while it looks like he didn't do a lot of work, it's because the shell script helped him do most of the tasks, which is what we're going to explore.

What is a shell script?

In short, a shell script is a program that the shell executes step-by-step, and the shell is another program that provides an interface between the Linux kernel and the end user. By default, the shell used by users in RHEL 7 is bash (/bin/bash).

Write a script to display system Information

First let's create a new directory to hold our shell script:

# mkdir scripts# CD scripts

Create a new text file system_info.sh, insert some comments in the header, and some commands:

#!/bin/bash
# This script will return the following system information:
# -Host Name:
Echo -e "\e[31;43m***** HOSTNAME INFORMATION *****\e[0m"
Hostnamectl
Echo ""
# - File system disk space usage:
Echo -e "\e[31;43m***** FILE SYSTEM DISK SPACE USAGE *****\e[0m"
Df -h
Echo ""
# - System idle and in-use memory:
Echo -e "\e[31;43m ***** FREE AND USED MEMORY *****\e[0m"
Free
Echo ""
# - System startup time:
Echo -e "\e[31;43m***** SYSTEM UPTIME AND LOAD *****\e[0m"
Uptime
Echo ""
# -Login user:
Echo -e "\e[31;43m***** CURRENTLY LOGGED-IN USERS *****\e[0m"
Who
Echo ""
# - 5 processes using the most memory
Echo -e "\e[31;43m***** TOP 5 MEMORY-CONSUMING PROCESSES *****\e[0m"
Ps -eo %mem,%cpu,comm --sort=-%mem | head -n 6
Echo ""
Echo -e "\e[1;32mDone.\e[0m"

Then, give the script executable permissions and run the script:

# chmod +x system_info.sh./system_info.sh

For a better visualization, each part of the title is displayed in color:
The color feature is provided by the following command:

Echo-e "\E[COLOR1; Color2m\e[0m "

Where COLOR1 and COLOR2 are the foreground and background colors and are the strings you want to display in color.

Automating the Task

The tasks that you want to automate can vary depending on the situation. Therefore, it is not possible to cover all possible scenarios in an article, but we will describe three typical tasks that can be automated using shell scripts: 1) Update the local file database 1) find (or delete) files with 777 permissions 2) The file system warns when it uses more than the defined thresholds. Let's create a new file named auto_tasks.sh in the script directory and add the following:

#!/bin/bash
#Automated task example script:
# - Update the local file database:
Echo -e "\e[4;32mUPDATING LOCAL FILE DATABASE\e[0m"
Updatedb
If [ $? == 0 ]; then
        Echo "The local file database was updated correctly."
Else
        Echo "The local file database was not updated correctly."
Fi
Echo ""
# - Find and/or delete files with 777 permissions.
Echo -e "\e[4;32mLOOKING FOR FILES WITH 777 PERMISSIONS\e[0m"
# Enable either option (comment out the other line), but not both.
#Option 1: Delete files without prompting for confirmation. Assumes GNU version of find.
#find -type f -perm 0777 -delete
#Option 2: Ask for confirmation before deleting files. More portable across systems.
Find -type f -perm 0777 -exec rm -i {} +;
Echo ""
# - Warn when the file system usage exceeds the defined threshold
Echo -e "\e[4;32mCHECKING FILE SYSTEM USAGE\e[0m"
THRESHOLD=30
While read line; do
        # This variable stores the file system path as a string
        FILESYSTEM=$(echo $line | awk ‘{print $1}‘)
        # This variable stores the use percentage (XX%)
        PERCENTAGE=$(echo $line | awk ‘{print $5}‘)
        # Use percentage without the % sign.
        USAGE=${PERCENTAGE%?}
        If [ $USAGE -gt $THRESHOLD ]; then
                Echo "The remaining available space in $FILESYSTEM is critically low. Used: $PERCENTAGE"
        Fi
Done < <(df -h --total | grep -vi filesystem)

Note that there is a space between the last line of the script and two < symbols.

using Cron

To further improve your efficiency, you don't just want to sit in front of your computer and execute these scripts manually. Instead, you use cron to schedule these tasks to execute periodically and send the results to pre-specified recipients by mail, or save them to a file that you can view using a Web browser. The following script (filesystem_usage.sh) runs the well-known df-h command, formats the output to an HTML table and saves it to the report.html file:

#!/bin/bash
# Demonstrate a sample script for creating an HTML report using a shell script
# Web directory
WEB_DIR=/var/www/html
# A little CSS and table layout to make the report look a little nicer
Echo "<HTML>
<HEAD>
<style>
.titulo{font-size: 1em; color: white; background:#0863CE; padding: 0.1em 0.2em;}
Table
{
Border-collapse:collapse;
}
Table, td, th
{
Border:1px solid black;
}
</style>
<meta http-equiv=‘Content-Type‘ content=‘text/html; charset=UTF-8’ />
</HEAD>
<BODY>" > $WEB_DIR/report.html
# View hostname and insert it at the top of the html body
HOST=$(hostname)
Echo "Filesystem usage for host <strong>$HOST</strong><br>
Last updated: <strong>$(date)</strong><br><br>
<table border='1‘>
<tr><th class=‘titulo‘>Filesystem</td>
<th class=‘titulo‘>Size</td>
<th class=‘titulo‘>Use %</td>
</tr>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
# Read the output of df -h line by line
While read line; do
Echo "<tr><td align=‘center‘>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo $line | awk ‘{print $1}‘ >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo "</td><td align=‘center‘>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo $line | awk ‘{print $2}‘ >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo "</td><td align=‘center‘>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo $line | awk ‘{print $5}‘ >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Echo "</td></tr>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html
Done < <(df -h | grep -vi filesystem) echo "</table></BODY></HTML>" >> $WEB_DIR/report.html

In our RHEL 7 server (192.168.0.18), it looks like this:
You can add any information you want to that report. Add the following crontab entry to run the script every day at 1:30 PM:

30 13 * * * /root/scripts/filesystem_usage.sh

This article is reproduced from: http://www.linuxprobe.com/shell-automation-maintenance-tasks/

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Use shell scripts to automate Linux system maintenance tasks