Restoring after hardware failure

[Conrad11]

Hi there,

This is a bit generic but I hope you can understand (it would take too long to explain the actual problem - and this is just as good). Here's the situation:

This script gets executed every 10 minutes:

if ( var_x != 1 ) //var_x is read from an external file
{

    var_x = 1; //written to external file...obviously
    //
    // lots of time consuming script here writing data to files.
    //
    var_x = 0; //written to external file...obviously
}
else
{
    //stop script - nothing else todo.
}

The problem is: if I simulate a hardware failure (do a hard reset) then the script will never execute again.

I am able to find out where the script needs to continue from, it's just getting the script to actually get past that if statement and start again.

How would I go about this?

Thanks.


EDIT:[/] Solution is to use flock as they are reset if the computer is reset.