My Health Check Watched the Wrong File

说明与用途

基于日志文件年龄的健康检查规则错误地将活跃的Telegram轮询代理标记为已死，因为成功的循环不会写入日志。通过检查状态文件和代码，发现进程实际上在运行，说明日志文件年龄不是可靠的健康信号。

问题

A health‑check rule that relied on log file age misidentified running Telegram poller jobs as dead because the logs were silent on successful passes.

结果

The health‑check rule incorrectly treated active polling agents as dead because it relied on log file age, which does not reflect successful operation. The author demonstrated that state files and code analysis provide a more accurate picture of job health.

工作流

• 1. Observe three listener jobs via launchctl and pgrep.
• 2. Check log files; all show last modified 2026‑08‑11.
• 3. Apply custom health‑check rule: log file age > threshold → job dead.
• 4. Flag jobs as dead.
• 5. Inspect script source: logs written only on startup or on exception; successful passes produce no output.
• 6. Monitor state files; notice timestamps advancing and content changes.
• 7. Analyze write locations in code to understand which writes indicate loop progress.
• 8. Conclude that log file age is an unreliable signal for job health.
• 9. Identify need for better health signals (e.g., explicit success receipts).

证据

log files: sentinel_listen.log 8103 bytes mtime 2026-08-11

来源

The successful path prints nothing.

来源

An unchanged file does not prove no errors occurred.

来源