PHP ping

[Gayle29uk]

Ok, head hurts

Has anyone any idea how to ping an IP address from a PHP script? I seem to be looking at raw sockets and I don't like that much at all


P.S. Any answers involving exec() or similar will result in me screaming at you incoherently.

[Gayle29uk]

I tried playing with raw sockets and discovered that crappy webhost doesn't allow them

Bleugh.

[inf]

google is your friend

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by inf

google is your friend

Google has many many links to scripts using exec() or similar and parsing the resulting output string.

I wanted to do it natively and the only link I found used raw sockets which my webhost doesn't allow and I don't know of any other way of doing it

[pablissimo]

Try connecting to the host as if it were a webpage or similar using the standard file IO functions and timing how long it takes, it might be a bodged effort if there's no other way. Then deduct some small percentage to take into account any target system overhead that may have existed.

Can't think of another way without using sockets.

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by pablissimo

Try connecting to the host as if it were a webpage or similar using the standard file IO functions

That's what I'm doing as a bodge job. I'm not really bothered about the ping time, I just want to know it's replying.

However, I may alter this so it opens a telnet connection to the remote router as a comms check. That would work as well as a ping

[BuddhistPunk]

Are you sitting comfortably?

http://code.blitzaffe.com/php.php#icmpping

[pablissimo]

Originally Posted by BuddhistPunk

Are you sitting comfortably?

http://code.blitzaffe.com/php.php#icmpping

Originally Posted by that website

Note that access to raw sockets requires root access, so this script also requires root access - rendering it more or less useles for web applications

Originally Posted by Gayle29uk

and the only link I found used raw sockets which my webhost doesn't allow

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by pablissimo

<observant>

Yup, that's the one

[inf]

google is your friend

[pablissimo]

That... wasn't useful at all.

Of the ones I found on Google, most used some variation of exec, some used raw sockets, and one

<?php 
    function ping($host) 
    { 
        $ip = gethostbyname($host); 
        $ping = `ping -c 1 -q $ip`; 
        $res = '1 packets transmitted, 1 packets recieved'; 
        if(strpos($ping, $res)) 
            return true; 
        else 
            return false; 
    } 
?>

Doesn't actually appear to do...anything of value

ps Google is inf's friend

[CjC]

dont these scripts rely on two things?

1) What type of Web Server it is (IIS/Apache etc.. Linux/Windows or whatever) and
2) Whether or not the host actually allows ICMP packets to be sent from the webserver.

[pablissimo]

...yes

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by pablissimo

Of the ones I found on Google, most used some variation of exec, some used raw sockets, and one

<?php 
    function ping($host) 
    { 
        $ip = gethostbyname($host); 
        $ping = `ping -c 1 -q $ip`; 
        $res = '1 packets transmitted, 1 packets recieved'; 
        if(strpos($ping, $res)) 
            return true; 
        else 
            return false; 
    } 
?>

Doesn't actually appear to do...anything of value

Enclosing a command in backticks (``) executes it as a shell command and returns the output

[pablissimo]

Originally Posted by Gayle29uk

Enclosing a command in backticks (``) executes it as a shell command and returns the output

You learn something every day.

So how would you make a string that corresponds to a command but you don't want evaluated? Escape 'everything'?

[queball]

What are you looking for? A way to send raw packets even though you're explicitly not allowed to? There is a reason /bin/ping has to be SUID on a usual unixy setup, even if I personally don't think the reasons are very good. What you are asking is simply not allowed by the security model.

(You could use a seperate ping-daemon thing if the original post is a trick question.)

[W]

Originally Posted by pablissimo

You learn something every day.

So how would you make a string that corresponds to a command but you don't want evaluated? Escape 'everything'?

Backticks (`) are different from single quotes (') and double quotes (")

[pablissimo]

Ohhh backticks

I was reading them as single quotes =((

[Gayle29uk]

Originally Posted by queball

What are you looking for? A way to send raw packets even though you're explicitly not allowed to? There is a reason /bin/ping has to be SUID on a usual unixy setup, even if I personally don't think the reasons are very good. What you are asking is simply not allowed by the security model.

(You could use a seperate ping-daemon thing if the original post is a trick question.)

I wanted to ping a remote server to see if it was up or not. Instead I've implemented it in a little more detail and it now uses fsockopen() to open a socket to hostort which lets me monitor specific services instead of just whether as host is up or not.