webpage monitoring program

not just pings, but full page load test

[amznVibe]

Any suggestions for simple webpage monitoring program? I have a few that ping ports, like HTTP and FTP, but I need a full page load test to make sure there isn't a 500 error, etc. Screen alerts along with email notice and a log of event would be great options.

Thanks for any help!

[MonkeeSage]

amznVibe:

I'm not sure if this would be helpful or not, but I sometimes use the windows port of wget to check pages, like so:

wget [website.com...] -o wget.log --server-response --spider

Legend:
-o says to log the output to wget.log
--server-response says to log the actual numeric response
--spider says not to actually download anything

--------

The log of a working site / page, looks like this:

--00:36:44-- [website.com...]
=> `page.htm'
Connecting to website.com:80... connected!
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
2 Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:39:57 GMT
3 Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_mhp mod_mhp_log mod_virtcgi frontPage/5.0 mod_status_mhp
4 Last-Modified: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:53:54 GMT
5 ETag: "e0a786-2c71-3f3a5f12"
6 Accept-Ranges: bytes
7 Content-Length: 11377
8 Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=30
9 Connection: Keep-Alive
10 Content-Type: text/html
11
200 OK

The log of a 404 site / page looks like this:

--00:42:46-- [website.com...]
=> `brokepage.htm'
Connecting to website.com:80... connected!
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2 Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 07:45:58 GMT
3 Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_mhp mod_mhp_log mod_virtcgi frontPage/5.0 mod_status_mhp
4 Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=30
5 Connection: Keep-Alive
6 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
7
00:42:46 ERROR 404: Not Found.

--------

If you have Perl installed you could probably write a script to grep the fourth line for the numerics and take various actions based on the different server responses.

HTH
Jordan

[amznVibe]

hmm very clever... I could make one linux/apache server I use monitor the other with what you have shown me - but something I could run from my win2k desktop would be easier for me since I spend about 18 hours a day in front of this particular beast...

I am currently using a program called sMonitor but since it doesn't actually test for a full page load, it doesn't help me when someone messes with the server (like removing a module without telling me prior, argh)

[Stretch]

I use ipmonitor from deepmetrix which can check for a specific string of text on a page. It does a lot more besides but isn't the easiest to set up and aint exactly cheap.

Stretch

[amznVibe]

Stretch that looks very intense... good to know about but definitely overkill for what I want. I suspect I might end up coding something to solve this, which is a strange feeling as I have to believe that SOMEONE has got to have done this already...

[amznVibe]

Someone just showed me "What's Up Gold" but that also is overkill for my needs like ipmonitor. I cannot believe there is nothing popular out there to test for proper webpage loading without errors instead of just pinging. Strange!

[mvander]

you can use winHTTP componet (free from MS), and use it to request a response from the site, if you get a 200 OK, then your set. If not then have the script email or whatever. Just search web for winHTTP. I've also used
http*//www.internetseer.com before, worked pretty well.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 4:35 am (utc) on Sep. 28, 2003]
[edit reason] DeLinked [/edit]

[ogletree]

I use UltraDNS. It is expensive but having DNS failover is great. I have a file called working.txt and they check it every 2 minutes to see if it is there and that it has the word working in the file. If it is not it changes the DNS to point to my backup server.