ssh-ping1

Usage

Overview

check if host is reachable using ssh_config

Options

-4

Use IPv4 only

-6

Use IPv6 only

-c count

Stop after sending <count> request packets

-C

Connect as soon as the host responds
and try reconnecting after a SSH session ends (e.g. rebooting).
Useful also for IDRAC, IPMI, ILO devices, Switches, etc...
which don't have a full shell environment.
CTRL+C stops reconnect attempts.

-E

Exit immediately after first successful ping
(can be used to trigger a follow up task like rsync)

-F configfile

Specifies an alternative per-user configuration file.
If a configuration file is given on the command line,
the system-wide configuration file ( /etc/ssh/ssh_config ) will be ignored.
The default for the per-user configuration file is ~/.ssh/config.

-h

Show this message

-i interval

Wait <interval> seconds between sending each request.
The default is 1 second.

-l user

Try login with <user> as username. The default is the current value of $USER.

-D

Print timestamp (unix time + microseconds as in gettimeofday) before each line

-H

Print timestamp (human readable) before each line

-W timeout

Time to wait for a response, in seconds

-p port

Port to connect to on the remote host.
This can be specified on a per-host basis in the configuration file.

-q

Quiet output.
Nothing is displayed except the summary lines at startup time and when finished

-n

No colors.
(e.g. for black on white terminals)

-v

Verbose output

--version

show version information

Tab_completions

Ubuntu (and maybe other distros) already ship
shell completions for ssh which can be used:

Environment

SSH_PING_NO_COLORS

if set, no colors are shown (like -n)

Exit_codes

Examples

ssh-ping -E hostname && echo "First successful ping. Starting rsync..."

ssh-ping -q -c 1 hostname >/dev/null && echo "Host is up!"

ssh-ping -q -c 1 hostname >/dev/null || echo "Host is down!"

SSH_PING_NO_COLORS=true ssh-ping -c 1 hostname