From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Nov 24 20:03:27 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA02253 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 24 Nov 1996 20:03:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from obie.softweyr.com (slc152.modem.xmission.com [204.228.136.152]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA02241 for ; Sun, 24 Nov 1996 20:03:20 -0800 (PST) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.com (8.7.5/8.6.12) id VAA00410; Sun, 24 Nov 1996 21:02:53 -0700 (MST) Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 21:02:53 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <199611250402.VAA00410@obie.softweyr.com> From: Wes Peters To: quest@shaft.unicus.ca CC: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Script Question Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Dan McCaffrey asked: > Greetings All! I have a FreeBSD 2.1.5 Box connected by ISDN service to my > ISP. Unfortunately my ISPs router is configured to clear connections that > have been inactive for 10 minutes. Right now I have set cron to ping a > host outside of my network every 5 minutes in order to keep the > connection alive. As you could guess my root mailbox gets filled up > pretty quick with the results from the ping. Is there a way that I could > set up a script that is loaded at startup, runs in the background and > pings a host every 5 minutes, without having to involve cron? Thank you > in advance! Look at 'man ping'. Try something like: ping -n -i 300 some.host.some.where.in.ca which will ping the named host every 5 minutes. If your ISP gets clever and disallows ICMP Echo packets (i.e. ping requests) from resetting their timer, use rsh to run this command on *their* system; the output packets coming back to you will look like any interactive session and will fool their watchdog. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com