Running Simultaneous Commands

[Anonymous Monk]

Hello All, Here's my question: I'm trying to ping about 1500 to 2000 machines in our environment, but instead of having 1 system command pinging each machine, I'd like to have 4 or even 8 system commands running simultaneously, which can decrease the amount of time to ping all the machine significantly. Is this possible through perl?

[merlyn]

Well, I wrote an article that is precisely that, although there are probably better solutions, like using POE to do it.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

[erasei]

With perl 5.8's new iThreads you could easily write up a quick multi-threaded script that could use X amount of threads, each one pinging a machine. For more info, check out the perlthrtut.

However, this is obviously for tracking servers/machines remotely to make sure they are still alive, in which case, this wheel has been invented many times before, and much better than it could be written by a single person in any usable time frame.

Windows: What's Up Gold works pretty well, very graphical and boss-friendly (ooo, pictures!).

*nix: There are several, I have used both NOCOL and Big Brother. Choose whichever one works best for your needs.

[sauoq]

Sounds like a job for fping.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

[Nitrox]

What type of environment is this and what 'bookkeeping' are you looking to do with the results from ping? There are much better solutions for availability monitors.

-Nitrox