How do I timestamp every ping result?

Question

Ping returns this by default:

64 bytes from 203.173.50.132: icmp_seq=0 ttl=244 time=57.746 ms

Is there some way I can get it to add the timestamp?

For example,

Mon 21 May 2012 15:15:37 EST | 64 bytes from 203.173.50.132: icmp_seq=0 ttl=244 time=57.746 ms

I'm on OS X v10.7 (Lion) which seems to have some BSD version of ping.

score 153 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

153

I could not redirect the Perl based solution to a file for some reason so I kept searching and found a bash only way to do this:

ping www.google.fr | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done

Wed Jun 26 13:09:23 CEST 2013: PING www.google.fr (173.194.40.56) 56(84) bytes of data.
Wed Jun 26 13:09:23 CEST 2013: 64 bytes from zrh04s05-in-f24.1e100.net (173.194.40.56): icmp_req=1 ttl=57 time=7.26 ms
Wed Jun 26 13:09:24 CEST 2013: 64 bytes from zrh04s05-in-f24.1e100.net (173.194.40.56): icmp_req=2 ttl=57 time=8.14 ms

The credit goes to https://askubuntu.com/a/137246

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:22

Community

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answered Jun 26 '13 at 11:13

richk

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This doesn't appear to work on debian wheezy. Just stays there without output until ctrl+c – KBeezie Aug 06 '13 at 20:18
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@KBeezie Not sure what the problem was in your case. I've just tried it on debian wheezy and it worked fine. Are you using `bash` as your shell? – richk Oct 29 '13 at 12:29
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I actually like this approach much better as it does not use perl or awk. – Alexey Kamenskiy Apr 14 '15 at 09:23
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To also see the timeouts, all that is needed is to redirect `stderr` to `stdout` before the pipe (`|`), like so: `ping $host 2>&1 | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done`. If you wish to write (or append) that to a file, you can redirect the whole command (after the done). Also, if you wish not to spawn a subshell, the `date` command supports `echo`ing arbitrary input, like so: `ping $host 2>&1 | while read pong; do date "+%c: $pong"; done`. Please note that the `format` argument of `date` (that starts with `+`) can be customized at will. See `man date` for further information. – 7heo.tk Jul 19 '16 at 10:47
FWIW, my default shell is ZSH and it wasn't working. When I ran it in Bash it worked fine. OP does mention that in the first paragraph of his comment... :) – levifig May 29 '18 at 05:52
@richk there is nothing really bash specific about this, it should work in posix shells. works in the public domain korn shell. – minusf Aug 09 '18 at 07:38
Here is the fish version: `ping google.fr | while read pong; echo (date)": $pong"; end` – Byscripts Mar 24 '20 at 10:05
this is so helpful. i am also teeing the output like so: `ping -i 5 google.com | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong" | tee -a uptime.log; done` – Purag Oct 14 '20 at 19:06

score 81 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 11 '16 at 05:53

81

If your AWK doesn't have strftime():

ping host | perl -nle 'print scalar(localtime), " ", $_'

To redirect it to a file, use standard shell redirection and turn off output buffering:

ping host | perl -nle 'BEGIN {$|++} print scalar(localtime), " ", $_' > outputfile

If you want ISO8601 format for the timestamp:

ping host | perl -nle 'use Time::Piece; BEGIN {$|++} print localtime->datetime, " ", $_' > outputfile

edited Jun 11 '16 at 05:53

Phrogz

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answered May 21 '12 at 05:59

Dennis Williamson

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although i removed the 'bytes from' filter since I want the timestamps on every line... especially the timeouts. – John Mee May 21 '12 at 06:22
Works well, but it suppresses STDERR for the summary results at the end when you press Control+C. Same issue exists for the BASH answer. – Nicholas Blasgen Apr 24 '14 at 13:31
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@NicholasBlasgen: That's because the Ctrl-C goes to the last process in the pipe and the `ping` only receives a `SIGPIPE`. You can use process substitution instead of a pipe: `ping host > >(perl -nle 'print scalar(localtime), " ", $_')` and the Ctrl-C will go to `ping` and do what you want. You can do the same thing with the `while` loop. By the way, on my system the summary goes to `STDOUT` rather than `STDERR` (so it gets timestamped, too). – Dennis Williamson Apr 24 '14 at 14:12
This answer would be much better, IMHO, if the datetime format was in ISO8601. – Phrogz Oct 21 '15 at 03:52
@Phrogz: I agree that that's a more desirable format, but my answer comes close to matching what the OP asked for (depending on locale). To get ISO8601 format you can `use Time::Piece; print localtime->datetime` (and other appropriate settings) starting with 5.10 or use a CPAN module or `strftime`. – Dennis Williamson Oct 22 '15 at 17:16
Great point about the OP's format! And thanks for including the iso8601 equivalent. – Phrogz Oct 22 '15 at 17:18

score 37 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 19 '17 at 15:13

37

From man ping:

   -D     Print timestamp (unix time + microseconds as in gettimeofday) before each line.

It will produce something like this:

[1337577886.346622] 64 bytes from 4.2.2.2: icmp_req=1 ttl=243 time=47.1 ms

Then timestamp could be parsed out from the ping response and converted to the required format with date.

edited Aug 19 '17 at 15:13

Jonathan Soifer

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answered May 21 '12 at 05:20

ДМИТРИЙ МАЛИКОВ

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sorry. adsl dropped out as I was adding tags... it's OSX Lion - doesn't have a "-D" option :-( – John Mee May 21 '12 at 05:35
someone good with perl and regex could pipe this to format to a human readable date time =] – Cleber Reizen Feb 01 '20 at 01:48

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 22 '17 at 10:10

31

On OS X you can simply use the --apple-time option:

ping -i 2 --apple-time www.apple.com

Produces results like:

10:09:55.691216 64 bytes from 72.246.225.209: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=34.388 ms
10:09:57.687282 64 bytes from 72.246.225.209: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=25.319 ms
10:09:59.729998 64 bytes from 72.246.225.209: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=64.097 ms

answered Aug 22 '17 at 10:10

Nicolas Grison

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This doesn't handle timeouts. – Andrew Grimm Mar 12 '21 at 08:33

score 22 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 20 '20 at 09:12

terminal output:

ping -i 5 google.com | xargs -L 1 -I '{}' date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: {}'
file output:

ping -i 5 google.com | xargs -L 1 -I '{}' date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: {}' > test.txt
terminal + file output:

ping -i 5 google.com | xargs -L 1 -I '{}' date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: {}' | tee test.txt
file output background:

nohup ping -i 5 google.com | xargs -L 1 -I '{}' date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S: {}' > test.txt &

Bromo · Answer 6 · 2013-08-15T21:52:03.617

My original submission was incorrect because it did not evaluate date for each line. Corrections have been made.

Try this

 ping google.com | xargs -L 1 -I '{}' date '+%+: {}'

produces the following output

Thu Aug 15 10:13:59 PDT 2013: PING google.com (74.125.239.103): 56 data bytes
Thu Aug 15 10:13:59 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=14.983 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:00 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=17.340 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:01 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=15.898 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:02 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=15.720 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:03 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=16.899 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:04 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=16.242 ms
Thu Aug 15 10:14:05 PDT 2013: 64 bytes from 74.125.239.103: icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=16.574 ms

The -L 1 option causes xargs to process one line at a time instead of words.

Doesn't print during periods of 'Request timeout'; saves them all up and they get dumped with the same timestamp when request timeouts stop. — David Eison, Oct 23 '14 at 06:58

score 10 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 19 '17 at 22:10

10

On macos you can do

ping --apple-time 127.0.0.1

The output looks like

16:07:11.315419 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.064 ms
16:07:12.319933 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.157 ms
16:07:13.322766 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.066 ms
16:07:14.324649 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.148 ms
16:07:15.328743 64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.092 ms

answered Oct 19 '17 at 22:10

Clintm

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This approach does seem to work okay for replies, but the timestamp is excluded for timeouts. – Robert Hartshorn Apr 20 '22 at 00:59

score 9 · Answer 8 · edited Feb 13 '21 at 01:52

The simpler option is just using ts(1) from moreutils (fairly standard on most distros).

$ ping 1.1.1.1 | ts 

Feb 13 12:49:17 PING 1.1.1.1 (1.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data. 
Feb 13 12:49:17 64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=5.92 ms
Feb 13 12:49:18 64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=5.30 ms
Feb 13 12:49:19 64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=5.71 ms
Feb 13 12:49:20 64 bytes from 1.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=5.86 ms

or

 ping 1.1.1.1 -I eth0 | ts "[%FT%X]"

Allows for the same strftime format strings as the shell/date workaround.

score 7 · Answer 9 · edited Mar 03 '17 at 16:19

Try this:

ping www.google.com | while read endlooop; do echo "$(date): $endlooop"; done

It returns something like:

Wednesday 18 January  09:29:20 AEDT 2017: PING www.google.com (216.58.199.36) 56(84) bytes of data.
Wednesday 18 January  09:29:20 AEDT 2017: 64 bytes from syd09s12-in-f36.1e100.net (216.58.199.36): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=2.86 ms
Wednesday 18 January  09:29:21 AEDT 2017: 64 bytes from syd09s12-in-f36.1e100.net (216.58.199.36): icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=2.64 ms
Wednesday 18 January  09:29:22 AEDT 2017: 64 bytes from syd09s12-in-f36.1e100.net (216.58.199.36): icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=2.76 ms
Wednesday 18 January  09:29:23 AEDT 2017: 64 bytes from syd09s12-in-f36.1e100.net (216.58.199.36): icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=1.87 ms
Wednesday 18 January  09:29:24 AEDT 2017: 64 bytes from syd09s12-in-f36.1e100.net (216.58.199.36): icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=2.45 ms

score 4 · Answer 10 · answered May 21 '12 at 05:28

4

Pipe the result to awk:

 ping host | awk '{if($0 ~ /bytes from/){print strftime()"|"$0}else print}'

answered May 21 '12 at 05:28

Prince John Wesley

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has promise! doesn't like the strftime so i'm working on that – John Mee May 21 '12 at 05:40
Check this code with a non existing host or when the net is down, I'm not happy with this result ;-) – Thomas Szteliga Oct 31 '14 at 02:19

score 3 · Answer 11 · answered Mar 31 '18 at 10:59

You can create a function in your ~/.bashrc file, so you get a ping command ping-t on your console:

function ping-t { ping "$1" | while read pong; do echo "$(date): $pong"; done; }

Now you can call this on the console:

ping-t example.com

Sa 31. Mär 12:58:31 CEST 2018: PING example.com (93.184.216.34) 56(84) bytes of data.
Sa 31. Mär 12:58:31 CEST 2018: 64 bytes from 93.184.216.34 (93.184.216.34): icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=208 ms
Sa 31. Mär 12:58:32 CEST 2018: 64 bytes from 93.184.216.34 (93.184.216.34): icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=233 ms

score 1 · Answer 12 · edited Nov 20 '14 at 16:44

1

You did not specify any time stamp or interval for how long you would require such output, so I considered it to be an infinite loop. You can change it accordingly as per your need.

while true
do
   echo -e "`date`|`ping -n -c 1 <IP_TO_PING>|grep 'bytes from'`"
   sleep 2
done

edited Nov 20 '14 at 16:44

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 21 '12 at 18:25

v3nM

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You should change the `grep` part to ` `egrep '(bytes from|errors)'` – rubo77 Aug 10 '15 at 06:34
@rubo77 Can you elaborate why to use 'egrep' instead of 'grep' – v3nM Aug 11 '15 at 14:07
egrep only to add a regular expression to get an output for errors too – rubo77 Aug 11 '15 at 14:13

Thomas Szteliga · Answer 13 · 2015-08-04T15:03:59.207

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ping -D -n -O -i1 -W1 8.8.8.8

or maybe

while true; do \
    ping -n -w1 -W1 -c1 8.8.8.8 \
    | grep -E "rtt|100%" \
    | sed -e "s/^/`date` /g"; \
    sleep 1; \
done

edited Aug 04 '15 at 15:03

answered Oct 31 '14 at 02:16

Thomas Szteliga

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score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Sep 15 '17 at 13:35

I also need this to monitor the network issue for my database mirroring time out issue. I use the command code as below:

ping -t Google.com|cmd /q /v /c "(pause&pause)>nul & for /l %a in () do (set /p "data=" && echo(!date! !time! !data!)&ping -n 2 Google.com>nul" >C:\pingtest.txt

You just need to modify Google.com to your server name. It works perfectly for me. and remember to stop this when you finished. The pingtest.txt file will increase by 1 KB per second (around).

Thank for raymond.cc. https://www.raymond.cc/blog/timestamp-ping-with-hrping/

Update: The pingtest.txt file will increase by 4.5 KB per min (around). — DBALUKE HUANG, Sep 15 '17 at 13:44

score 0 · Answer 15 · answered Nov 22 '16 at 01:50

0

Try this line.

while sleep 1;do echo "$(date +%d-%m-%y-%T) $(ping -c 1 whatever.com | gawk 'FNR==2{print "Response from:",$4,$8}')" | tee -a /yourfolder/pingtest.log;done

You'll have to cancel it with ctrl-c tho.

answered Nov 22 '16 at 01:50

nDCasT

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good idea with using `tee`, but the problem with `-c 1` is losing the overall stats... – minusf Aug 09 '18 at 07:34

Saboteur · Answer 16 · 2022-12-03T23:32:28.247

-1

just use sed and loop:

ping google.com|while read; do sed -r "s/(.*)/$(date) \1/g"<<<"$REPLY";done

edited Dec 03 '22 at 23:32

answered Feb 13 '21 at 03:00

Saboteur

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Does not work because it only ever gets the timestamp from the start of the command. – senden9 Apr 13 '22 at 06:49
Updated my answer. Really need to rerun sed for each separate line, so I have added loop for that. – Saboteur Dec 03 '22 at 23:32

How do I timestamp every ping result?

16 Answers16

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