[hobbit] HTTP Test Timeout & Delays

[Ralph Mitchell]

On 11/17/06, Richard Leyton <richard at leyton.org> wrote:
> So we upped the default timeout on bbtest-net to 20s, which helped
> but it's still not really enough, and I'm reluctant to increase it
> further the board for just one bad egg. If there's a workaround to
> this particular problem, I'd be happy to hear suggestions.

You could try doing what I do, and run an external script to grab the
page.  I use curl to actually fetch web pages.  Here's a minimal
script to give you an idea:

   #!/bin/sh

   TIMEOUT=60     # give up after 60 seconds
   COOKIES=/tmp/cookies
   CURLOPTS="-s -S -L -b $COOKIES -c $COOKIES -m $TIMEOUT"
   TEST=http

   curl $CURLOPTS -o /tmp/page.html http://server.domain.com
   ret=$?
   if [ "$ret" -ne "0" ]; then
     MESSAGE="Something broke.  Curl code: $ret"
     COLOR=red
   else
     MESSAGE="Everything is peachy keen!"
     COLOR=green
   fi

   LINE="status $MACHINE.$TEST $COLOR `date`
$MESSAGE"
   $BB $BBDISP "$LINE"


You can also examine the page for "interesting stuff", such as text
that wouldn't appear if the server is broken, or text that shouldn't
appear if it's working fine.  Curl also handles secure servers,
proxies, several different authentication mechanisms, and can give you
timing information if you want it for graphs.

Ralph Mitchell