Steffen Dettmer writes:
* ian@golding.u-net.com wrote on Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 12:43 +0000:
I have been considering using netcat with the minus z option as an enterprise monitoring solution to test the availability of smtp, http, lotusnotes SAP etc.
With netcat?! Does this mean, you built a script that connects the service, all by hand?
Erm, the person who informed me about netcat told me about the -z option which does a connect to a tcp/udp port without sending anything. If it can connect it returns '0' if not it returns '1'. So running it from a command line nc -z targethost targetserviceportnumber You can do this for lists of specific host types and it gives a simple test of a service being available on the network. It was the simplicity that I was interested in, I already use an industrial strength enterprise management tool but the supplier doesn't deem it necessary to provide this type of facility at this point in time so it was a nice cheap complement, as long as it doesn't break anything of course.
In this case you should check out Netsaint (http://netsaint.sf.net IIRC). This is a very nice tool for enterprice monitoring of TCP/SNMP service and so on.
Had a quick revisit of this. It is quite amazing how good the free stuff is now compared to commercially available systems. Trouble is what I use is paid for for the forseeable future. Many thanks to all who replied. I feel a pilot project coming on and I'll report back any serious failings.