Try this from cron: #!/usr/bin/perl use Mail::Send; use strict; my $VERBOSE = 0; if(@ARGV && $ARGV[0] eq "-v") { $VERBOSE = 1; shift; } my $OK = 0; my $DEAD = -1; my $RESTARTED = 1; my $SER_PID = (@ARGV && $ARGV[0]) || "/var/run/ser.pid"; my $result = ser(); if($result != $OK) { my $m = new Mail::Send; my $subject = $ENV{HOSTNAME} . ": "; $subject .= $result == $DEAD ? "FATAL SER ERROR " : "WARNING - SER RESTARTED"; my $body = $result == $DEAD ? "ser did not start after /etc/rc.d/ser restart" : "ser was not running, but was successfully restarted with /etc/rc.d/ser/restart"; $m->subject($subject); $m->to('root'); my $fh = $m->open; print $fh $body; $fh->close; } sub ser { my $status = $OK; if(! ser_running()) { $status = $DEAD; print "$0: ser not running ($SER_PID)\n" if($VERBOSE); system("(/etc/rc.d/ser restart 2>&1) >/dev/null"); sleep 10; if(ser_running()) { print "$0: ser now running after restart\n" if($VERBOSE); $status = $RESTARTED; } } else { print "$0: ser running ok - nothing to do\n" if($VERBOSE); } return $status; } sub ser_running { if(! -e $SER_PID || ! -f $SER_PID) { return 0; } else { open( SER , "< $SER_PID" ) || die "$0: failure opening: $SER_PID ($!)\n"; my $pid = <SER>; chomp $pid; if(kill 0, $pid) { return 1; } else { return 0; } } }