Command line tools for ping HTTP?

Question

Background : It's a common question as we can search at google "ping works but http does not"

ping is not a reliable test of network connectivity.

ping working just means enough of the IP stack is up to process ICMP Echo requests (that's not a huge portion of the system compared to what's required for SSH and web servers). We could have had what I call a "partial panic" (Kernel blew up, but the IP code kept running), run out of RAM, or our SSH/HTTPd processes could have fallen over for unspecified reasons.

Resources

My Question : Any command line tool for ping HTTP?

score 13 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 03 '18 at 05:38

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curl --head http://ipaddress/

is the closest to a ping, in that it is the minimum check that the server is responding to HTTP requests.

Any monitoring system worth its salt has this functionality built in. Nagios is free IIRC

edited Jul 03 '18 at 05:38

Robert Hafner

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answered Nov 26 '12 at 12:42

Stephen Connolly

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If you want to measure the time to connect, you can add some parameters to curl. `curl --head -s -w %{time_total} om.de` – abuzze Sep 13 '21 at 06:16

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 26 '12 at 06:29

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There's plenty of command line tools that are capable of being a command line HTTP or simple TCP client. netcat and telnet (and yes, nmap) can tell you if the TCP port is responding, and curl or wget can handle attempting a full HTTP request.

But why not get a real monitoring solution in place instead, if you're having problems with the service failing?

answered Nov 26 '12 at 06:29

Shane Madden

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Would you prefer any real monitoring solution? Please suggest me. – Md Mahbubur Rahman Nov 26 '12 at 06:31
+1 for Nice Answer. :) – Md Mahbubur Rahman Nov 26 '12 at 06:32
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@MahbuburRAaman There's some good information on monitoring solutions [here](http://serverfault.com/q/394393) and [here](http://serverfault.com/q/44). – Shane Madden Nov 26 '12 at 06:34
Shane Madden, I have improved my question as your answer. – Md Mahbubur Rahman Nov 26 '12 at 06:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 26 '12 at 12:46

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There is a small program to test performances of a remote host using TCP packets it's named echoping. I think that what are you looking for

answered Nov 26 '12 at 12:46

Ali Mezgani

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Command line tools for ping HTTP?

3 Answers3