Scripting the running of update.php for a multi-Drupal site

Hi,

I have written a simple script that auto backs up my Drupal 5.x sites (one Drupal file system, multi-db), then downloads the new Drupal version and installs it. I am happy with it, but would like to go one step further, and have it run the update.php script of each site. I would also like it to list any errors that might have been generated (extracted from watchdog?).

I also have another script that backups up Drupal and MySQL and then updates any Drupal modules that are found in the 'sites/all/modules/' directory. I would like to be able to run update.php from a script for each of the website, and monitor the errors that might be generated.

Shell script function would be ideal, but I can live with my shell script calling a php script. Perhaps having a customised multi-site CLI runable update.php script might be the way to go?

Any thoughts on how this might be accomplished?

Cheers,

Paul