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Watchdog: Open-Source Bash Tool Monitors Linux Services and Automates Recovery

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Watchdog is a lightweight, open-source Bash utility designed to monitor the health of Linux services such as APIs, background workers, and database listeners. It supports HTTP, TCP, and command-based health checks, each configurable with timeout, retry count, and retry-delay settings. When a service fails all configured retries, Watchdog executes a defined remediation sequence using direct argument arrays rather than shell strings, reducing security and configuration risks. The tool is intentionally stateless and one-shot, meant to be triggered via systemd timers or cron jobs rather than running as a persistent daemon. MIT-licensed and requiring only Bash 4.3 or newer, Watchdog targets developers who want a simple, auditable, host-level recovery tool without the overhead of full observability platforms.

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