Why not... 1.) Develop a form that contains the ip address, or host name of the machine that you want to ping. 2.) Develop a view form with a table field that queries the host form. 3.) Develop a simple Perl script and place it on your server to be run via an escalation every X minutes.
The Perl script would then use the ARSPerl module to open up the host form within the AR System and retrieve a list of the hosts that it needs to contact. It would then cycle through each of the servers therein, and update the corrosponding server's host record within the AR System. The Perl script could use either one of the Net modules, or simply be a wrapper for the ping utility. Maybe you could even do something a bit more classy, such as open a connection to the any of the services that might be on the server and verify that they are available (for example, if this server is an IMAP server, your script could access an account, or if the server is a database server, it could create a row in a test table & database) and collect the delta for the amount of time that the operation took and place that into the host record. >From your control panel form, use an active link that updates every X time period. The idea being that any servers that are down, or services that would be unavailable would be visible within the control panel. Of course, the accuracy is limited by the delta in time that is present between the last run time of the script and the refresh on the control panel, but it should work fine for the average stuff. Besides, if it's a major network or service outage, the customers will be on the phone anyway... Just a thought... -- Will Du Chene [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.myspace.com/wduchene _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor: www.rmsportal.com ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
