These questions are allowed in the Emergency UNIX and Linux Support forum because the question is important to the submitter and the submitter is willing to pay for the privilege of posting in this forum.

Back on topic...

I don't have any objection to Jim's use of:

Code:

   [ $! -eq 0 ] && OK='pass' || OK='fail'

except that it is using the wrong shell variable. $! expands to the process ID of the last asynchronously started command (and there are no asynchronously started commands in this script). The exit code from the last executed command is $?, so I believe the intent was:

Code:

   [ $? -eq 0 ] && OK='pass' || OK='fail'

and, the request was for a report about once a minute. Both suggested scripts will produce a report about 12 times per minute (when the target system is not responding) to a few hundred times per minute (when the target system is responding). And, since the shell variable date is not set in MadeInGermany's script or in jim mcnamara's script, the use of:

Code:

   echo "$OK at `$date`" >>mylogfile

just adds a line containing "pass at " or "fail at " (while I assume the intent in both cases was to include the status and the current date and time) in the log file.

Furthermore, the command:

Code:

ping -c 1 -w 5 AIXservername

produces output similar to:

Code:

PING google.com (172.217.2.46): 56 data bytes

--- google.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0.0% packet loss, 1 packets out of wait time
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 29.182/29.182/29.182/0.000 ms

(using google.com instead of AIXservername since AIXservername is not the name of a host known on my network) which is written to standard output from this script. Since I assume this script will be started in the background, spewing output like this to standard output seems undesirable.

I would be tempted to use something more like:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh    
now=$(date +%s)
stop=$(( now + 86400 ))
while [ $now -le $stop ]
do
   ping -c 1 -w 5 AIXservername > /dev/null && OK='pass' || OK='fail'
   echo "$OK at $(date)" >>mylogfile
   sleep 60
   now=$(date +%s)
done

or, if detailed ping output is desired in the log instead of just one word of status:

Code:

#!/bin/ksh    
now=$(date +%s)
stop=$(( now + 86400 ))
while [ $now -le $stop ]
do
   echo "*** $(date)" >> mylogfile
   ping -c 1 -w 5 AIXservername >> mylogfile
   sleep 60
   now=$(date +%s)
done

PS
Note that Jim's script also contains:

Code:

   now=`$date +%s`

and MadeInGermany's script also contains:

Code:

while now=`$date +%s`;  [ $now  -le $stop ]

both of which are likely to produce a diagnostic similar to:

Code:

-ksh: +%s: not found