Managing a running for on-server scripts

Question

The title is a bit fuzzy because I don't know the right vocabulary.

Here's the thing I am trying to do: I have a script/program on the server for running checks. Now my co-workers want that this script can be started from a website, and the logs viewed from there. The process can be quite long running for the checks, usually more than a few hours.

for that, I gathered, I'd have to monitor the processes with the website script, and show their logs. The chosen language would be either PHP or Python.

I'd very much like a hint or view on how such a thing is generally done and what are best practices, as I'm unsure how to start with this one. Especially a reliable way to start/monitor the processes would be much welcome.

Answer 1

If you choose Python check out Celery (although it may be a little bit overkill if you want to keep things simple). It allows you to run asynchronous tasks and you can easily monitor them. There is also a django integration for celery (django-celery) that includes a web monitor for the tasks.