I want to write a little bit of PHP to check if 2 systems on my network are online.

Currently I've used this

$output = shell_exec('ping -n 1 192.168.1.90');
echo "<pre>$output</pre>";

and it just shows the ping output. It works, does the job, but it's ugly.

Pinging 192.168.1.90 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.1.90: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
 
Ping statistics for 192.168.1.90:
    Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 1, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

Any better suggestions?

Something to give

192.168.1.90 - Online
or Offline

This?

 

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1239068/ping-site-and-return-result-in-php

I'm currently using the last suggestion on there, should really try the earlier ones too.

The "last" on depends on how you're sorting them, which may well be different to the rest of us.


Here's the code used at backup.tehforum.co.uk - no idea if it's the best or even a good way of doing it, but it works well enough:

<?php
	function ping($host, $port, $timeout)
	{
		$tB = microtime(true);
		$fP = fSockOpen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);
		if (!$fP) { return '<strong style="color: red;">failed</strong>'; }
		$tA = microtime(true);
		return '<strong style="color:green;">success in '.round((($tA - $tB) * 1000), 0).' milliseconds</strong>';
	}
?>
 
<p>Pinging 178.79.137.101... <? echo @ping("178.79.137.101", 80, 10); ?>.</p>
 
<p>Pinging www.tehforum.co.uk... <? echo @ping("www.tehforum.co.uk", 80, 10); ?>.</p>
 
<p>Verifying forum is online...<?
	if (strpos(strtolower(file_get_contents("http://www.tehforum.co.uk/forum")),'<title>teh forum</title>') !== false)
	{
		echo '<strong style="color:green;">success</strong>';
	}
	else
	{
		echo '<strong style="color:red;">failed</strong>';
	}
?>.</p>

Well I did quote the one I've used in the first post....

 

And thanks for Teh Backup code, I shall give that a go :D

Damn it, ping doesn't work with my Windows Apache server.

the rest is redundant...

If it's a web server you want to check then why not just use file() or file_get_contents() to try to retrieve something you know to be there?

(This may be bad practise, I dunno)

If I can't get a ping solution working I might have to install some webserver on the two systems in question and use the method you suggest. They're both running ubuntu and one is a VM, so to be honest that one probably doesn't really need to be checked.