Harlin Seritt wrote: > I have a list of IP addresses I am testing with socket.gethostbyaddr(). > For the most part, I am able to get a hostname returned to me when I > run gethostbyaddr(). I am also hoping this will allow me to tell if a > computer is up or down. However, in my environment, I am finding that I > am able to get a hostname even though I am unable to actually ping that > server (when I ping a server i like this, I get 'request timed out' > messages telling me that the server is not up). > > Other times, I am able to ping a server with success but the > gethostbyaddr() request will not be able to return a hostname for me > making me think that machine is truly down when I know it's not. Can > anyone give me any pointers as to why this happens? Is there anyway I > can do a reliable ping to another server with Python? I am not > interested in doing system calls with a system Ping client (I have to > ping way too many machines and this either takes too long or causes > severe memory leakage due to MS's horrible ping client). Also, I am > unable to use Jeremy Hylton's Python ping client because it does little > more than call gethostbyaddr(). Thanks for taking a look at this. > If you have the ability to run code on the machines you are interested in you might want to consider Nicola Larosa's heartbeat recipe:
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/52302 You may also find something useful in http://pynms.sourceforge.net/ping.html regards Steve -- Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119 Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
