Design idea for Ping Application

[Marc]

Thanks Andrew,

But alas I am working under a Windows environment.

Actually I already have my threads running and can use them to ping using a
direct call under the os module. But my problem was being able to have them
running continuously.

I guess technically using a threaded application they won't run continuously
anyway since each thread will only get a piece of the clock. But it takes
time to start the ping process going, and if I could simply find a way to
read the data back to me from a running os process as opposed to having to
stop it to read it.

I guess the main question is are there any file functions, like readlines,
that will only look at the available data and not look for EOF?

Thanks again,
Marc


"Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:bhrs4h$o5n$1 at slb5.atl.mindspring.net...
> Marc:
> > I've been searching old posts for ideas, and can't quite come up with
> > anything. In short I need an application that will continuously ping
> > 11 different hosts and track the status of the pings.
>
> That was a flashback.  I posted a "sndping" module on this
> list many years ago.  It made a ping sound for every ping.
>
> > This works, but presents me with a problem. In order to continuously
> > ping using the "-t" option for ping, I am unable to perform a
> > readlines() command because it hangs. I've tried other variations of
> > read commands, but they all hang my system. I guess it keeps looking
> > for EOF and never finds it because the thing is still running. Is
> > there a type of read command that just takes what is currently in the
> > buffer and stores it?
>
> The normal way is to use the select module, at least for unixy
> systems.
>
> %cat t.py
> import os, select
>
> class Ping:
>   def __init__(self, hostname):
>     self.hostname = hostname
>     timeout = len(hostname) % 5 + 3  # for some variation
>     self.infile = os.popen("ping -i %d %s" % (timeout, hostname))
>   def fileno(self):
>     return self.infile.fileno()
>   def readline(self):
>     return self.infile.readline()
>
> def report(hostnames):
>   pings = [Ping(name) for name in hostnames]
>   while 1:
>     print "Waiting for another ping ...."
>     r, w, e = select.select(pings, [], [], 1)
>     for p in r:
>       print "Ping", p.hostname, p.readline()[:-1]
>
> if __name__ == "__main__":
>   import sys
>   if len(sys.argv) == 1:
>     raise SystemExit("missing list of machines to ping")
>   else:
>     report(sys.argv[1:])
>
> %python t.py biopython.org dalkescientific.com python.org
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping dalkescientific.com PING dalkescientific.com (66.39.47.217): 56 data
> bytes
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping biopython.org PING biopython.org (155.94.54.81): 56 data bytes
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping python.org PING python.org (194.109.137.226): 56 data bytes
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping python.org 64 bytes from 194.109.137.226: icmp_seq=0 ttl=238
> time=96.553 ms
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping python.org 64 bytes from 194.109.137.226: icmp_seq=1 ttl=238
> time=94.554 ms
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Waiting for another ping ....
> Ping biopython.org 64 bytes from 155.94.54.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55
time=17.084
> ms
>
> You could also spawn off a thread for each one, but the select
> approach is pretty simple.  (See Aahz's thread tutorial for an example
> of how to use threads for a similar task.)
>
>                     Andrew
>                     dalke at dalkescientific.com
>
>