cron scripting and ping

[dewar]

Long time listener, first time poster....

Not really actually, I've been scripting for the whole of a week so forgive any obvious holes in my training.

I'm trying to make a cron script that will test wether or not I have internet access every 5 minutes or so. I've figured out how the every 5 minutes part works, but I don't know what command to use to check the internet connection status.

Using a ping command has been suggested to me, but how do I make the output from the ping command into a variable of some sort that I can use with an if statement?

Hopefully that all made sense....

Thanks in advance for the help,
Dewar

[Dolda2000]

I've made a similar script on my router, only that it checks for how much has been transferred as well. Anyway, here's my suggestion:

#!/bin/sh

t=$(date +%s)
ping -c 1 -w 10 <IP of your ISP's gateway>
r=$?
t=$&#40;&#40;$&#40;date +%s&#41; - $t&#41;&#41;
if &#91; $r -ne 0 &#93;; then
    state=DOWN
else
    if &#91; $t -ge 5 &#93;; then
        state=VERYSLOW
    elif &#91; $t -ge 1 &#93;; then
        state=SLOW
    else
        state=UP
    fi
fi
ostate=$&#40;cat /var/run/inet&#41;
if &#91; "$ostate" != $state &#93;; then
    echo "$&#40;date "+%b %d %H&#58;%M&#58;%S"&#41;&#58; inet status is $state" >>/var/log/inet
    echo $state >/var/run/inet
fi