Linux Ping: Show time out

Question

How can I make the Linux ping to show the requests 'time out' instead of omitting the output?

Just like the Windows version of ping.

Answer 1

There's no way for the common ping to do that. If you are trying to script something you have some options:

ping -c 2 <ip>
RESULT=$?
echo $RESULT
1

If the ping fails, $? will be 1, if the ping is successful, $? will be 0.

The other option is using fping that works a lot like Cisco ping:

$ fping 200.1.1.1
200.1.1.1 is unreachable
$ fping 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.1 is alive

Answer 2

When I use ping to see if a host is up in shell scripts, I do something like this:

ping -W 1 -c 1 $HOST 2>&1 > /dev/null || (echo -n "dead!"; false) && command-that-needs-host-to-be-up

Basically, sends one ICMP that times out in a second with no output and uses the exit code to gate further action.

Answer 3

I am afraid but there is no 100% solution to that with standard ping. Even with ping -v for verbose output ping would be silent in case of timeouts. You could try to use:

ping -w 2 192.168.199.1
PING 192.168.199.1 (192.168.199.1) 56(84) bytes of data.

--- 192.168.199.1 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 0 received, 100% packet loss, time 1007ms

This would stop ping after 2 seconds and then show the number of packets transmitted and packet loss. Another option would be to use mtr.