Service health check script in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Service health check script

📖 Scenario: You are a system administrator who wants to monitor if important services on your server are running. You will write a simple script that checks the status of these services and reports if they are active or not.

🎯 Goal: Build a bash script that checks the health of three services: nginx, mysql, and ssh. The script will print if each service is running or stopped.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of service names in a variable

Create a variable to hold the command used to check service status

Use a loop to check each service status using the command

Print the service name and its status (running or stopped)

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

System administrators often need to monitor if critical services are running to keep servers healthy and avoid downtime.

💼 Career

Knowing how to write simple health check scripts is a basic skill for IT support, DevOps, and system administration roles.

1

Create a list of services to check

Create a variable called services that holds the names of these services exactly: nginx, mysql, and ssh separated by spaces.

Bash Scripting

# Create a variable called services with 'nginx mysql ssh'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use double quotes and separate service names with spaces inside the quotes.

2

Set the command to check service status

Create a variable called check_cmd and set it to the exact string systemctl is-active which will be used to check if a service is running.

Bash Scripting

services="nginx mysql ssh"
# Create a variable check_cmd with value 'systemctl is-active'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the string exactly as shown to the variable check_cmd.

3

Check each service status using a loop

Use a for loop with variable service to iterate over $services. Inside the loop, run the command stored in $check_cmd with the current $service and store the output in a variable called status.

Bash Scripting

services="nginx mysql ssh"
check_cmd="systemctl is-active"
# Use a for loop to check each service status
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use command substitution with $( ) to run the command and save output.

4

Print the service name and its status

Inside the for loop, add a printf statement to print the service name and its status in this exact format: Service nginx is running or Service mysql is stopped. If status equals active, print 'running', otherwise print 'stopped'.

Bash Scripting

services="nginx mysql ssh"
check_cmd="systemctl is-active"

for service in $services; do
    status=$($check_cmd $service)
    # Print service status here
    # Your code here
done

Need a hint?

Use an if statement to compare status with active. Use printf to format the output.