shell script doesnot executing

[James Long]

> Message: 24
> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:51:22 -0600
> From: "Harley D. Eades III" <hde at foobar-qux.org>
> Subject: Re: shell script doesnot executing
> To: Anirban Adhikary <anirban.adhikary at gmail.com>
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Message-ID: <1134719482.34653.30.camel at devilBSD.freeBSD>
> Content-Type: text/plain
> 
> On Fri, 2005-12-16 at 11:23 +0530, Anirban Adhikary wrote:
> >   Hi guys
> > This is Anirban here. I have the problem again with the previous shell
> > script.Which was
> > Write a shell script that will check whether a server is up or not(on ping)
> > & log the report to a file.
> > 
> > I have tried to write the program in the following way
> > 
> > #! /bin/sh
> > echo -n "Enter the IP or Hostname of the Server"
> > read host
> > #echo $host
> > ping -c2 $host &>file2
> > if [ $? = 0 ];then
> The problem is you're checking the exit status of ping, even if the host
> is down ping is exiting with a successful status.  You need to use sed
> or awk or something similiar to test for replys.

That is false.  ping exits with a true result code if at least one
ICMP reply is received, false otherwise.