Re: Feature request: "inverted" ping -a (beep on failure)

[Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net>]

On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 21:35:32 +0200 Christian Boltz wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> ping -a (beep on ping success) is a quite useful command, but it can be 
> annoying.
> 
> I'd like to have the exact opposite of it: beep when pinging fails.
> 
> I understand that this is slightly difficult because "ping success" is 
> easier to detect (incoming package) than "ping failure" (no incoming 
> package or firewall reject) - my proposal is to have a timeout for every 
> package (if no reply package comes in) and beep if no reply is seen 
> after the timeout is over.
> 
> For the timeout, the -W option could be used. The default timeout seems 
> to be 10 seconds, which is OK.
> 
> Usecase / why this would be useful for me:
> Basically for server monitoring. The exact usecase is that I have rented 
> a "root server" and asked the hoster to exchange a broken harddisk.
> With the "inverted" ping -a, it would be easy to notice when they switch 
> off the server to replace the disk.
> 
> Please consider this feature for the next version of ping ;-)
> 
> 
> (The iputils homepage does not list any bugtracker or similar, therefore 
> I'm asking here.)

Couldn't you look for exit code (status) 1 and then do a bell/beep
(or play a sound file :)?

Or do you want ping to beep and then continue running?

---
~Randy
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