Local network pinging in python

Question

Does anyone know how to use python to ping a local host to see if it is active or not? We (my team and I) have already tried using

os.system("ping 192.168.1.*") 

But the response for destination unreachable is the same as the response for the host is up.

Thanks for your help.

Acanthus

Answer 1

Use this ...

import os

hostname = "localhost" #example
response = os.system("ping -n 1 " + hostname)

#and then check the response...
if response == 0:
    print(hostname, 'is up!')
else:
    print(hostname, 'is down!')

If using this script on unix/Linux replace -n switch with -c !
Thats all :)

Votary

in case i get reply 'Destination host unreachable.' its not working. – Pinchcock

sure the Question could be better. but as he stated in the Description it does not work with "Destination host unreachable." - so your answer i wrong all the way. – Stockyard

Answer 2

I've found that using os.system(...) leads to false positives (as the OP said, 'destination host unreachable' == 0).

As stated before, using subprocess.Popen works. For simplicity I recommend doing that followed by parsing the results. You can easily do this like:

if ('unreachable' in output):
        print("Offline")

Just check the various outputs you want to check from ping results. Make a 'this' in 'that' check for it.

Example:

import subprocess

hostname = "10.20.16.30"
output = subprocess.Popen(["ping.exe",hostname],stdout = subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]

print(output)

if ('unreachable' in output):
    print("Offline")

Hamann

Be careful that parsing the output depends on the host OS language. – Carpophore

Answer 3

The best way I could find to do this on Windows, if you don't want to be parsing the output is to use Popen like this:

num = 1
host = "192.168.0.2"
wait = 1000

ping = Popen("ping -n {} -w {} {}".format(num, wait, host),
             stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)  ## if you don't want it to print it out
exit_code = ping.wait()

if exit_code != 0:
    print("Host offline.")
else:
    print("Host online.")  

This works as expected. The exit code gives no false positives. I've tested it in Python 2.7 and 3.4 on Windows 7 and Windows 10.

Gallican

Answer 4

I've coded a little program a while back. It might not be the exact thing you are looking for, but you can always run a program on the host OS that opens up a socket on startup. Here is the ping program itself:

# Run this on the PC that want to check if other PC is online.
from socket import *

def pingit():                               # defining function for later use

    s = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)         # Creates socket
    host = 'localhost' # Enter the IP of the workstation here 
    port = 80                # Select port which should be pinged

    try:
        s.connect((host, port))    # tries to connect to the host
    except ConnectionRefusedError: # if failed to connect
        print("Server offline")    # it prints that server is offline
        s.close()                  #closes socket, so it can be re-used
        pingit()                   # restarts whole process    

    while True:                    #If connected to host
        print("Connected!")        # prints message 
        s.close()                  # closes socket just in case
        exit()                     # exits program

pingit()                           #Starts off whole process

And here you have the program that can recieve the ping request:

# this runs on remote pc that is going to be checked
from socket import *

HOST = 'localhost'
PORT = 80
BUFSIZ = 1024
ADDR = (HOST, PORT)
serversock = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM)
serversock.bind(ADDR)
serversock.listen(2)

while 1:
    clientsock, addr = serversock.accept()
    serversock.close()
    exit()

To run a program without actually showing it, just save the file as .pyw instead of .py. It makes it invisible until user checks running processes.

Hope it helped you

Vilify

Sorry - but the question was for pinging the server, which is a different scenario. The connect only makes sense once you know that the server exists and is alive! – Ammonal

Answer 5

For simplicity, I use self-made functions based on socket.

def checkHostPort(HOSTNAME, PORT):
    """
        check if host is reachable
    """
    result = False
    try:
        destIp  =  socket.gethostbyname(HOSTNAME)
    except:
        return result
    s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    s.settimeout(15)
    try:
        conn = s.connect((destIp, PORT))
        result = True
        conn.close()
    except:
        pass
    return result

if Ip:Port is reachable, return True

If you wanna to simulate Ping, may refer to ping.py

Underage

Answer 6

Try this:

ret = os.system("ping -o -c 3 -W 3000 192.168.1.10")
if ret != 0:
    print "Host is not up"

-o waits for only one packet

-W 3000 gives it only 3000 ms to reply to the packet.

-c 3 lets it try a few times so that your ping doesnt run forever

Stealing

Answer 7

Use this and parse the string output

import subprocess
output = subprocess.Popen(["ping.exe","192.168.1.1"],stdout = subprocess.PIPE).communicate()[0]

Repudiation

Answer 8

How about the request module?

import requests

def ping_server(address):
    try:
        requests.get(address, timeout=1)
    except requests.exceptions.ConnectTimeout:
        return False

return True

• No need to split urls to remove ports, or test ports, and no localhost false-positive.
• Timeout amount doesn't really matter since it only hits the timeout when there is no server, which in my case meant performance no longer mattered. Otherwise, this returns at the speed of a request, which is plenty fast for me.
• Timeout waits for the first bit, not total time, in case that matters.

Trochanter