this script is intended for long term testing of reliability of network connection/connectivity

it should quit after 24hours and thus not spamming the logs

the script:

#!/bin/bash
# $1 = ip to test
# $2 = how many hours to test

LOGFILE="test_connection_$1.log"

HOURS=$2

MINUTES=$(($2*60))

MIN_CURRENT=0

echo "====== connection test for $1 started on : $(date '+%Y-%m-%d-%H-%M')" > $LOGFILE;
echo "script is set to run for $HOURS h (= $MINUTES min)" >> $LOGFILE;

time for MIN_CURRENT in $(seq 1 $MINUTES);
do
	ping -c 60 $1 >> $LOGFILE; # will ping every second thus one loop is 1 min
	printf "\n--- MIN_CURRENT $MIN_CURRENT of $MINUTES --- timestamp: $(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') \n" >> $LOGFILE;
done;

usage example:

# ping-test connection for 24hours and log it to file
/scripts/test_connection.sh 192.168.0.223 24

# how to view progress?
# open up a new terminal (Ctrl+Shift+N in GNU Debian Linux MATE)
tail -f test_connection_192.168.0.223.log

# how to generate nice summary, if any packet got lost
cat test_connection_192.168.0.223.log |grep -e "MIN_CURRENT" -e "packet loss"

60 packets transmitted, 60 received, 0% packet loss, time 137ms
--- MIN_CURRENT 1 of 1440 --- timestamp: 2021-01-21 11:35:57 
60 packets transmitted, 60 received, 0% packet loss, time 142ms
--- MIN_CURRENT 2 of 1440 --- timestamp: 2021-01-21 11:36:56 
60 packets transmitted, 60 received, 0% packet loss, time 142ms
--- MIN_CURRENT 3 of 1440 --- timestamp: 2021-01-21 11:37:55 

# to terminate the script
kill -SIGTERM $(pgrep test_connection)

possible improvements:

alternatively the log could be compressed afterwards to save disk space

tar fcvz $LOGFILE.tar.gz $LOGFILE;