--- title: "Monitoring PowerShell & Bash Scripts with Heartbeats | FourSight" description: "Add a single curl line to any script and know instantly when it fails, hangs, or finishes late." lang: en json-ld: | [ { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "headline": "Monitoring PowerShell & Bash Scripts with Heartbeats", "description": "Add a single curl line to any script and know instantly when it fails, hangs, or finishes late.", "author": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FourSight" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "FourSight" }, "url": "https://foursight.cloud/guides/monitoring-powershell-scripts", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://foursight.cloud/guides/monitoring-powershell-scripts", "datePublished": "2025-10-15", "dateModified": "2026-02-25", "wordCount": 1200 }, { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://foursight.cloud" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Guides", "item": "https://foursight.cloud/guides" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Monitoring PowerShell & Bash Scripts with Heartbeats", "item": "https://foursight.cloud/guides/monitoring-powershell-scripts" } ] } ] --- [FourSight ](/) [Features](/#features)[Pricing](/pricing)[Guides](/guides)[Glossary](/glossary)[FAQ](/faq) [Login](/auth)[Start free](/auth?signup=true) [Start free](/auth?signup=true) [All Guides](/guides) Reliability & Infrastructure # Monitoring PowerShell & Bash Scripts with Heartbeats Add a single curl line to any script and know instantly when it fails, hangs, or finishes late. 6 min read Guide Published Oct 15, 2025Updated Feb 25, 2026 ## The Problem with Unmonitored Scripts PowerShell scripts on Windows servers and Bash scripts on Linux boxes power everything from log rotation to certificate renewal. These scripts typically run via Task Scheduler or cron with no visibility beyond local log files. When they fail — wrong exit code, hung process, or a server that simply didn't boot — nobody notices until the downstream effect surfaces as a customer complaint. ## Adding a Heartbeat Ping to Any Script The integration is a single line at the end of your script. The key principle: only ping on success. If your script exits early due to an error, the ping never fires and FourSight alerts you. ### Bash / Shell Add a curl call after the main logic. Use the && operator so the ping only fires if the preceding command succeeds. ### PowerShell Use Invoke-RestMethod at the end of your script, wrapped in your existing error handling. ``` # PowerShell — ping only on success try { # … your script logic … Invoke-RestMethod -Uri "https://ping.foursight.cloud/hb/" -Method Get } catch { Write-Error "Script failed: $_" exit 1 } ``` ## Bash Example with Error Handling For Bash scripts, trap errors and only ping after the critical section completes. ``` #!/usr/bin/env bash set -euo pipefail # … your script logic … # Ping on success curl -fsS --retry 3 --max-time 10 https://ping.foursight.cloud/hb/ ``` ### Monitoring a Commercial SaaS? FourSight's free plan includes 10 commercial-safe monitors with multi-region validation — free forever, no card. [Start Monitoring Free](/auth?signup=true) ## Choosing the Right Schedule Mode If your Task Scheduler job runs 'Daily at 06:00', use cron-expression mode with '0 6 \* \* \*'. If your script is triggered by an event but should run at least once every N minutes, use fixed-interval mode. Set a grace period that accounts for your script's maximum expected runtime plus a safety margin. ## Handling Long-Running Scripts For scripts that take minutes or hours, send the ping only after completion. Set your grace period to the expected runtime plus 50%. For extremely long jobs (e.g. a 4-hour data migration), consider sending a start ping to a separate [heartbeat monitor](/glossary/heartbeat-monitor "Glossary: heartbeat monitor") so you can detect both 'never started' and 'started but didn't finish' failure modes. ## Alerting & Escalation Pair your heartbeat monitor with a notification rule so failures reach the right person. A missed nightly backup ping at 3:15 AM should page the on-call engineer, not send a Slack message to a channel nobody watches at night. [Monitor Your Scripts Now →](/auth?signup=true) #### Related Guides [What Is Uptime Monitoring? The Complete Guide 12 min ](/guides/what-is-uptime-monitoring)[Multi-Region Monitoring Explained 8 min ](/guides/multi-region-monitoring-explained)[SSL Certificate Expiry Monitoring 10 min ](/guides/ssl-certificate-expiry-monitoring)[How SSL Certificates Expire Silently: The Failure Modes 8 min ](/guides/how-ssl-certificates-expire-silently) #### Compare FourSight [vs UptimeRobot →](/compare/uptimerobot-alternative)[vs StatusCake →](/compare/statuscake-alternative)[vs Pingdom →](/compare/pingdom-alternative) 10 free commercial-safe monitors [View Pricing](/pricing) ## Protect Your SaaS Revenue Start monitoring in under 60 seconds. [Start Monitoring Free](/auth?signup=true)[View Pricing](/pricing) FourSight © 2026 [TetraCore](https://tetracorehq.com/). All rights reserved. FourSight is a TetraCore product — Bowling Green, Ohio. 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