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

[Christian Boltz <netdev-vger-kernel.org-/+gSslFCPOGzQB+pC5nmwQ@public.gmane.org>]

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.)


Gruß

Christian Boltz
-- 
"we will support any library from any repo combined with
any application" is something that NO ONE does.
Or if they do, they are insane, or lying, or both.
[Greg KH in opensuse-factory]
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html