Hey everyone. I'm writing a script that uses rsync with ssh to sync files with a bunch of boxes. I want it to check if the clients are up before attempting to rsync, so I used Net::Ping.

Trouble is, Net::Ping returns false even if the host is up. Here is a snippet of test code I used.
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use Net::Ping;

$host = "138.238.227.90";
$p = Net::Ping->new();
print "$host is alive.\n" if $p->ping($host);
$p->close();

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When I run this, I get no return, no matter what the host state. And this is directly from the Net::Ping docs.
I'm on an Ultra10 running Solaris 7. Whats more is that when I tried to test it out on a Linux box (2.2.12-20smp) I get this: 

Use of uninitialized value at /usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-linux/Socket
+.pm line 295.
Bad arg length for Socket::unpack_sockaddr_in, length is 0, should be 
+16 at
/usr/lib/perl5/5.00503/i386-linux/Socket.pm line 295.

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Perl version on Linux is 5.005_03
Perl version on Solaris is 5.005_03
Net::Ping version on both is 2.02

If anyone has any suggestions, including an alternative to Net::Ping, I would be most grateful.

In reply to Trouble with Net::Ping by sagat

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