is my server alive?

xanderman

hihi, im a php newbie and im attempting to write a basic sort of content management system aimed at irc network web sites. as i learn more about php i will add more features to my cms.
anyway, something i thought would be nice to have on any irc group web page is the status of the ircd (online/offline). is there some way i can 'ping' an address through php and then echoan online/offline based on the reply?
something else that would be nice to have is an online/offline status indicator for each user in their profiles, similar to blitzed. i realise that i will have definately bitten off more than i can chew, but does anyone know how this system works?

thanks in advance for any replies.

bpat1434

You probably want to use [man]fopen/man or [man]fsockopen/man to get the online/offline status of the irc servers. Not sure what their responses would be, but it's a step in the right direction.

Here's something to help you along:

<?php

$server = 'irc.fef.net';
$port = 6667;

$fp = fsockopen($server, $port, $errno, $error, 10);
if(!empty($errno) || !empty($error))
{
	die('Error: '.$errno.'<br>'.$error.'<hr>');
}

$line = fread($fp, 2048);
if(eregi("^NOTICE AUTH.*$", $line))
{
	echo 'Server is Online!<br>';
}
else
{
	echo 'Server is Offline.<br>';
}

?>

xanderman

thanks for your help - only problem is that it shows 'server is offline' despite the server being online. i had a bit of a play around with the code but it didnt help; ive also tried for a server running far away on the other side of the world and one running on localhost; same results 😕

bpat1434

heh... I said it wasn't perfect....

If you run that script, it connects to irc.fef.net (EFNet network). The expected result from irc.fef.net is:

NOTICE AUTH :*** Processing connection to einstein.fef.net
NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking Ident
NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname
NOTICE AUTH :*** No Ident response
ERROR :Closing Link: 127.0.0.1 (Client Exit)

So my code just checks to see if (1) it connects to the domain and (2) that NOTICE AUTH is sent back. You'll have to know what is sent back to your browser/program from each server in order to get this working.

Here are a few:
irc.bolchat.org
NOTICE AUTH : Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH : Found your hostname
ERROR :Closing Link:

irc.ptnet.org
ERROR :Closing Link:

eu.undernet.org
NOTICE AUTH : Looking up your hostname
NOTICE AUTH : Checking Ident
NOTICE AUTH : Found your hostname
NOTICE AUTH : No ident response
:graz.at.Eu.UnderNet.org 451 * :Register first.
ERROR :Closing Link: by graz.at.Eu.UnderNet.org (Registration Timeout)

So I guess you could look for NOTICE AUTH or ERROR because if it's error, then the server is online, but the PHP script can't connect to it. In that case, on the line that has eregi() in it, the "^NOTICE AUTH.$" part should be changed to:
"^NOTICE AUTH|ERROR.$"
That should work for the most part. But as I said, you'd need to know what the server is sending back so you can look for it and determine of the server is online or offline.

xanderman

ok its all good now - thanks again!
for anyone else who might want to use this, do: "^NOTICE AUTH|$server|ERROR.*$" as a few unrealircd servers like to respond with the server name first.