Measure server DOWN time?

[RenoWV]

I realize there are perl scripts that can measure the server uptime and server load, but I was wondering if it's possible to measure server downtime over a specified period. For example, such a script might allow us to access an .shtml page that would say something like "This website's server was down 4 hours 6 minutes 12 seconds since the first of the month".

Is that a statistic that is possible to measure from the client side (via the browser), using an installed perl script? Or is something like that impossible because, by definition, the server is not working during the downtime measurement period?

 

[siberian]

Netsaint does a great job at this. You can also write an mrtg plug-in in perl.

Basically you have a script that checks the server every 'n'. It then logs the up or down status of that server.

Another piece of software can then analyze those logs and give you the info you are after.

Check out MRTG, it really is well suited to this sort of operation.

 

[RenoWV]

Thanks very much siberian -- I checked out their site (it is now at

http://www.nagios.org)

and downloaded the program. It certainly appears pretty amazing but to be honest it is a huge sherman tank and all I'd like to find is a little volkswagon -- a single script to keep a record of the amount of time the server is down, and nothing else.

If you or anyone else runs across anything like that, I'd appreciate the feedback....

 

[siberian]

MRTG is the little volkswagon. Check it out.

There are extensions to monitor most common things.