On 2011-11-23 21:16, Russell Coker wrote:
It's quite common for me to ping a server while it's down. Often when doing so I have a rough idea of how long it will take (for example rebooting the new Hetzner servers I'm running in Germany takes about 160 seconds during which there are no ping responses) so it's good to know how long it is before I should expect a response. At other times I want a running count of how long it's been down so I can give an accurate complaint when someone answers my call.
The standard ping programs tell you the packet count (which by default is 1 per second) when it receives a response. When there is no response nothing is printed.
I would like a ping type program which will tell me how many seconds the target has not been responding for.
Does anyone know of such a program?
I made a very cool discovery a couple of months ago: This can be done with the 'ping' which ships with Debian Squeeze! mattcen@owen:tmp$ dpkg -S $(which ping) iputils-ping: /bin/ping mattcen@owen:tmp$ dpkg -l iputils-ping Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-=============-=============-=============================================== ii iputils-ping 3:20100418-3 Tools to test the reachability of network hosts mattcen@owen:tmp$ ping -D adam PING adam.lan (192.168.2.2) 56(84) bytes of data. [1322045416.121969] 64 bytes from adam.lan (192.168.2.2): icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.052 ms [1322045417.123508] 64 bytes from adam.lan (192.168.2.2): icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.059 ms [1322045418.125086] 64 bytes from adam.lan (192.168.2.2): icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.042 ms [1322045419.127338] 64 bytes from adam.lan (192.168.2.2): icmp_req=4 ttl=64 time=0.059 ms ^C --- adam.lan ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.042/0.053/0.059/0.007 ms mattcen@owen:tmp$ Unfortunately, this -D option is rather new (for example it's not available in Ubuntu 10.04), so may not be available on all hosts you use; I'm still trying to work out exactly which version introduced the change, but I can't seem to find the upstream repository. -- Regards, Matthew Cengia