Loading ...Testing Connectivity with fping and send mail if any hosts are unreachable
fping is one my favorite network profiling / scripting tool. It uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a target host is responding or not.
Unlike ping , fping is meant to be used in scripts, so its output is designed to be easy to parse.
You can easily write perl / shell script to check a list of hosts and send mail if any are unreachable.
fping command example
Just type the following command to see if we can reach to router:
$ fping router
Output:
router is alive
You can read list of targets (hosts / servers) from a file. The -f option can only be used by the root user. Regular users should pipe in the file via
I/O redirectors (stdin). For example read all host names from ~/.ping.conf file
$ fping < ~/.ping.conf
You can also netmask to ping the entire network i.e generate a target list from a supplied IP netmask. For example, ping the class C 192.168.1.x:
$ fping -g 192.168.1.0/24
or
$ fping -g 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.255
Sample shell script to send email if host is down
#!/bin/bash
HOSTS="router sun printer laptop sony-laptop xbox backup-server"
DLIST=""
for h in $HOSTS
do
fping -u $h >& /dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo ${h} host is down send email
# mail -s "Host ${h} down" admin@you.com </dev/null
fi
done
Another good example is when you want to perform an action only on hosts that are currently reachable.
#!/usr/bin/perl
$myHosts = ‘cat /etc/hosts.backup | fping -a‘;
foreach $host (split(/\n/,$myHosts)) {
# take action or call other function
}
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Tags: fping_command, internet control message protocol, ping network, profiling network, see if host is alive or not ~ Last updated on: November 21, 2007
It’s good tool but it is not in-built in redhat.
[root@server1 scripts]# fping
-bash: fping: command not found
[
from where can I download.
@Rishi, Download FPING RHEL / CentOS / Fedora Package -
http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/fping/
Show us an example of your ping.conf file contents.
cat ping.conf