Why network scripts automate connectivity tasks in Bash Scripting - See It in Action

Why Network Scripts Automate Connectivity Tasks

📖 Scenario: You are a network technician who needs to check if several important servers are reachable. Doing this manually every time is slow and boring. Automating this task with a script saves time and avoids mistakes.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple Bash script that checks if a list of servers are reachable by pinging them. The script will automate the connectivity check and print the results.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Bash array with exact server names

Create a variable for the ping count

Use a for loop to ping each server using the ping count variable

Print whether each server is reachable or not

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Network administrators often need to check if servers or devices are online. Automating this with scripts saves time and reduces errors.

💼 Career

Knowing how to write simple network scripts is useful for IT support, system administrators, and network engineers to monitor and troubleshoot connectivity.

1

Create the server list

Create a Bash array called servers with these exact entries: "google.com", "github.com", and "example.com".

Bash Scripting

# Create the servers array with the given server names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use parentheses and quotes to create a Bash array.

2

Set the ping count

Create a variable called ping_count and set it to 2 to specify how many ping packets to send.

Bash Scripting

servers=("google.com" "github.com" "example.com")
# Set ping_count to 2
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the number 2 to the variable ping_count.

3

Ping each server

Use a for loop with the variable server to iterate over servers. Inside the loop, ping each server using ping -c $ping_count $server and check if the ping was successful using $?.

Bash Scripting

servers=("google.com" "github.com" "example.com")
ping_count=2

# Use a for loop to ping each server
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the ping command with -c option and check the exit status with $?.

4

Display the results

Run the script so it prints whether each server is reachable or not. The output should show exactly these lines for each server: google.com is reachable, github.com is reachable, and example.com is reachable (or not reachable if ping fails).

Bash Scripting

servers=("google.com" "github.com" "example.com")
ping_count=2

for server in "${servers[@]}"; do
    ping -c $ping_count $server > /dev/null 2>&1
    if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
        echo "$server is reachable"
    else
        echo "$server is not reachable"
    fi
done

# Run the script to display results
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just run the script. The echo commands inside the loop print the results.