PPP Stats, Connected time

gboutwel · 07-18-2002, 10:58 PM

I've got a console-mode FW machine. How can I determine how-long this machine's ppp interface has been connected?

Mik · 07-19-2002, 06:44 AM

A simple script which compares the current time and the time stamp of when it connected should work. When ppp connects it should send some kind of message to syslog. You can get the last connection line from the log file. And then compare it with the current time to figure out how long you've been online.
You could also add a simple command which places the timestamp in a file when you connect. Maybe something like:
date > /var/run/pppconnected

gboutwel · 07-19-2002, 11:35 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Mik
A simple script which compares the current time and the time stamp of when it connected should work. When ppp connects it should send some kind of message to syslog. You can get the last connection line from the log file. And then compare it with the current time to figure out how long you've been online.
You could also add a simple command which places the timestamp in a file when you connect. Maybe something like:
date > /var/run/pppconnected

Mik thanks. I had thought of that I just figured there was something easier or better that was already done. How does PPP know how long it's been connected? If I loose connection, or the peer drops on me it reports how long I was connected in syslog. How does it know? If it knows isn't there some way that I could get it to tell me that. I can get it to tell me stats like how many packets it's sent/recieved.

Again, thanks.

Mik · 07-22-2002, 03:12 AM

I suppose it probably keeps an internal timer of how long it has been connected. I've never used ppp so I wouldn't know if it's possible to get that information. I'd say maybe check the manpages for something like that.

But it shouldn't be to hard to write a simple script. You can easily extract the timestamp from the log file by doing something like:

timestamp=`grep "pppd: Connect" /var/log/messages | tail -n 1 | cut -b 1-15`

Might need to modify that a bit since I don't know what messages get put into the log file.