How to tell if a job has run?

[upstart at eehouse.org]

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 06:27:29PM +0000, Scott James Remnant wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 10:01 -0800, upstart at eehouse.org wrote:
> 
> > I know only that there's a file /etc/event.d/hi, not whether the "hi" 
> > job has been successfully run (and exited), nor whether any jobs that
> > run on the "hi" event ever got launched.  Is there any way to get this
> > information out of upstart?
> > 
> Not at this time.
> 
> > What I really want is a way to look at a system and see a tree of what
> > jobs ran when, and which were launched in response.  Some but not all
> > of this information can be gotten out of log files if upstart (as init)
> > is launched with the -v flag.  Can I get close without modifying my
> > kernel commandline?
> > 
> The problem with this log is that it would become arbitrarily large the
> longer the system had been running, eventually consuming all system
> resources on very-long-running systems.

Doesn't this statement apply equally well to anything that logs?  And
isn't the problem already solved, or at least addressed, by log
rotation?  Admittedly log rotation isn't necessarily available when
upstart starts, but that argues against shipping with the -v flag in
the kernel commandline rather than against supporting logging for use
during the development phase.  For bringing up a new system using
upstart, some sort of logging, or of understanding the state we're in,
would be invaluable.

I can at least put echo statements into pre-start and post-stop script
blocks.

Thanks,

--Eric
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