Local network pinging in python - networking

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.

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 :)

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")

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.

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

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

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

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]

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.