1. Scripts should always return an error (>0) when things did not go as planned and 0 when they did. Always.
2. Scripts should always notify you when they return >0. Either in their own way or via emails sent by Cron.
3. Use chronic ( from Debian moreutils package) to ensure that cron jobs only email output when they ended in error. That way you don't need to worry about things sent to STDOUT spamming you.
4. Create wrapper scripts for jobs that need extra functionality: notification, logging, or sanity checks.
