\_ It seems like on Thu, Jul 06, 2000 at 08:30:16PM -0700, Craig White scribbled: \_ Orig Msg> [added by sinck] so we would probably want to ping \_ Orig Msg> [added by sinck] an internet addressonce every 30 seconds. [...] \_ Orig Msg> I read man ping and found that I can ping address -i30 -q but I want that \_ Orig Msg> process in the background so I get a shell prompt so I add an ampersand to \_ Orig Msg> the line to make it... \_ Orig Msg> \_ Orig Msg> ping (address) -i30 -q & [...] \_ \_ make a crontab entry: \_ 30 * * * * /usr/local/bin/chkisdn.sh Note that this crontab entry and 'ping ... -i30' are *not* the same '30'. crontab means 30 minutes, ping means 30 seconds. In the FWIW department, I've before added a happy little sound wrapper to the ping output...made it easy to tell when the flaky DSL of the company of the time would come back to life. :-) David