Help making an automated ping batch file

Hey all,

I am in charge of searching for files at our clients' firms using a batch file. One issue I run into is that some computers at a firm may be left off, and so the search for the files is unsuccessful. It'd be nice to have a way to check if the relevant computers at a firm are on. As such, I am working on an automated ping batch file that reads IPs from a text file and logs the results to a batch file.

I am not so experienced with writing batch files, but I was able to cobble something together based on some code I saw online. However, it's not working--it logs IP addresses as responding whether or not they actually are. I have reproduced the batch code below. I assume that the problem has something to do with the error level. If someone could take a look and give me some pointers on getting the code to work (and perhaps some insight into why what I have doesn't work), I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

Code:

@echo off

Set CompList=complist.txt
Set PingListLog=pinglistlog.txt

If Not Exist "%CompList%" (

   Echo Cannot find list of computers called %CompList%
   Pause
   GoTo :EndOfScript

   )

   
   echo Scanning began on %date% at %time% > %PingListLog%
   
   for /f %%i in (%CompList%) do call :ScanLbl %%i
   
   echo Scanning completed on %date% at %time% >> %PingListLog%
   
   GoTo :EndOfScript

   :ScanLbl
   
   echo Scanning %1
   set attrib=responding
   ping -n 1 %1
   if errorlevel 1 set attrib = nonresponsive
   echo %1 is %attrib% >> %PingListLog%
   
   :EndOfScript

 

You are defining two variables. attrib and attrib{space}. They are not the same.

Remove the space after attrib in the if errorlevel line.
The space after the equals sign isn't needed either:

Code:

if errorlevel 1 set attrib=nonresponsive

If errorlevel 1 is the same as If %errorlevel% GEQ 1, and is true if the errorlevel is 1 or greater
using if %errorlevel%==1 checks for the specific error number of 1.
Either should work in this case.

One case where you might get a responding result is if a router replies with a message that the destination route is unreachable. In that case ping does get a response, so the errorlevel is 0:

Code:

C:\Temp Dir\test>ping 192.168.9.30

Pinging 192.168.9.30 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.9.205: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.9.205: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.9.205: Destination host unreachable.
Reply from 192.168.9.205: Destination host unreachable.

Ping statistics for 192.168.9.30:
    Packets: Sent = 4, [COLOR=Red][B]Received = 4[/B][/COLOR], Lost = 0 (0% loss),

C:\Temp Dir\test>echo %errorlevel%
[COLOR=Red][B]0[/B][/COLOR]

You can use this method to check for that result:

Code:

echo Scanning %1
set attrib=responding
ping -n 1 %1|Findstr /I /C:"timed out" /C:"host unreachable"
if %errorlevel%==0 set attrib=nonresponsive
echo %1 is %attrib%>> %PingListLog%

 

Thanks for the help, folks. One thing that I'm still getting used to is that white space matters in batch files.

TheOutcaste: Could you explain what the part that you added to the ping statement does? I.e.:

ping -n 1 %1|Findstr /I /C:"timed out" /C:"host unreachable"

What does the /C switch do? Is that something to do with the C drive, or what?

Thanks.

 

Click Start | Run (or press WinKey+R), type cmd, press Enter
Type findstr /? for an explanation of all the switches.
Not sure why they picked the letter C for this one. My best guess is it's for Combined. If you specify a search string as just "timed out", it will search for timed or out. Out to lunch would match.
Using /C:"timed out" combines the two words into one phrase, so it has to be an exact phrase match.
From the help:
/C:string Uses specified string as a literal search string.
What that line does is Pipe (the | symbol is Pipe) the output of the Ping command to Findstr, which checks for either of the two strings indicated with the /C: switches. The /I means it's not case sensitive.
The result is checked in the If statement; if the errorlevel is 0, one of the strings was found, meaning an error occured.
Easy way to remember the errorlevel:
F0und
M1ssing