How to test the uptime of a webserver?

[Andrew D]

Redd Vinylene wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 2:22 AM, Moises Castellanos <m2o7i1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Aug 31, 2008 at 7:05 PM, Redd Vinylene <reddvinylene at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Hello hello!
>>>
>>> I got this dedicated server which is exposed to DDoS attacks quite
>>> frequently. Say I need to host a website on it, is there any way of
>>> telling how often it is actually online (to the rest of the world)?
>>>
>>> Maybe make some sort of ping script from a remote server?
>>
>>    Hello,
>>
>>     You can install nagios and monitor the web server. It will send you an
>> email when
>> the server is down and when is up again. With this information you can know
>> the uptime
>> of the web server.
> 
> I'd have to install Nagios on a different server then, right? I doubt
> the actual server knows when its ISP's link drops (or just slows down)
> due to an attack.
> 

You can easily get nagios to test the web server sitting on the same 
machine its installed on and you can also get nagios to ping some 
external target to test the link.  However if the link is down that 
won't help you, so basically yes it would be wise to have an external
nagios server.