Re: Device support for a simple network ping

[Dohn Arms <dohnarms@anl.gov>]

Hello,

I've actually been working and using something along those lines, but 
with a custom heartbeat protocol, needing an external heartbeat-watching 
program.  I'm close to making an official release of my "alive" module.  
It's in the synApps development SVN at
https://subversion.xray.aps.anl.gov/synApps/alive/trunk/
The main documentation is at
https://subversion.xray.aps.anl.gov/synApps/alive/trunk/documentation/aliveDoc.html

The record sends a heartbeat along with some other information, and the 
record also opens a TCP port (restricted to the daemon) that allows 
receiving static information about the IOC, being specified environment 
variables and things like bootline (for vxWorks) or userid/groupid 
information (for Linux and Darwin).
There is no included daemon to receive the traffic, but the protocol is 
explicitly described in the HTML documentation.  I plan to release the 
daemon I am using as an example, but as it's heavily slanted to how our 
group is using it, I did not want to make it the "officially" supported 
version.  Right now, we are monitoring heartbeats from around 100 APS 
beamline IOCs using this.
Vxworks, Linux, and Darwin IOCs are currently supported.  I have had 
some issues with building under Windows, so that's not supported yet.

Dohn


On 07/02/2014 11:09 AM, J. Lewis Muir wrote:
> On 7/2/14, 10:58 AM, Phillip Sorensen wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > Does anyone out there have device support for issuing a ping to a
> > network device or a block of network devices.
> Hi, Phil.
>
> Why do you want this?
>
> If you're trying to monitor whether a network device is up, there may
> be some solutions out there, but they may or may not use an actual ICMP
> echo request.  See this Tech-Talk thread:
>
>    http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/tech-talk/2014/msg00324.php
>
> Lewis