How do I check the availability of a webserver?

I want to check if specific webservers are available. And I of course want a negative result if there is no server listening.
It looks as if the “RESTful Binary Sensor” is not made for this purpose because it generates an error if there is no answer.

So which sensor is to be used to check the availability of a http server?

You could use the ping binary sensor

or the command line binary sensor to run a ping like command

or the TCP component

Thank you!

Ping and Command line don’t work for my setup and requirements but “TCP Binary sensor” shuold be it.

I am playing with it but I cant find out what the template should be like.

When I send

get /

to the server, it returns very much text that begins with

HTTP/1.1 

Thats fine. But what does the template look like that matches this long text (or just the first few characters)?
All the templates I find handle JSON. This is no JSON.

Here ist my sensor

- platform: tcp
  name:     server_fhem
  host:     fhem.internal
  port:     8083
  payload:  "get /\r\n"
  value_on: XX
  timeout:  3

What do I have to replace the XX with?

Use a shell command to curl the URL, and look for the response 200

I am using hass.io
My understanding is that shell commands don’t work with hass.io
Am I wrong?

I don’t know. From a quick search, it looks like they should work fine.

they did in my previous setup.

It works now with the following config

binary_sensor:
  - platform:      command_line
    name:          'webtools_via_http'
    command:       curl -m 3 -s webtools.internal:80/ > /dev/null && echo ON || echo OFF
    scan_interval: 33

Thanks!

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Thanks a bunch for this thread… Not sure if the new version changed something on us but payload_on/off seems to be required. Here’s the config working as of 2018-10-20

binary_sensor:
  - platform: command_line
    name: 'Kibana - Status'
    command: curl 192.168.0.251:5601 > /dev/null && echo on || echo off
    scan_interval: 180
    payload_on: "on"
    payload_off: "off"

I don’t have access to my setup just now so can’t test - what does this do?

My example above shows 2 things… one is how to get a Linux command to run and you being able to recognize between success or failure. In my case, it’s testing for a website being up and running. If the website is accessible then binary sensor is on otherwise off.

It’s useful to couple this with an automation that says if a site has not been on for X amount of time, notify me.

Thanks for the hints in this thread. Based on this i created a self-check for the webserver which seems to die from time to time while HA is alive (Pi3 + Hassio)… I understand this is a bit crude but so far it seems to do what I intended. I also tried hassio.restart which does not work in this context.

Some explanations: I used duckdns and from inside the network the resolution does not work properly thus the cert evaluation will come back with an error, which in the case of curl is return code 51. If I do not check for the curl return code the binary sensor would always be off…
Hope that is useful.

binary sensor: (in binary_sensor.yaml)

  - platform: command_line
    name: 'HA alive'
    command: curl -X GET https://someaddress:someport > /dev/null 2>&1; test $? -eq 51 && echo on || echo off
    scan_interval: 60
    payload_on: "on"
    payload_off: "off"

automation: (in server_health.yaml)

alias: Home assistant health check
id: 'home assistant health check'
initial_state: 'on'
trigger:
 - platform: state
   entity_id: binary_sensor.ha_alive
   to: 'off'
   for:
     minutes: 4
action:
 - service: notify.something
   data_template:
     message: "Webserver is not responding, restarting system in 1 minute {{now()}}."
 - delay:
     minutes: 1
 - service: homeassistant.restart

Payload isnt allowed anymore in the platform: command_line.

payload_on: "on"
payload_off: "off"

Curious what kind of solutions you all have been taken?

I used to do the same kind of sensor:

- platform: command_line
  name: 'Unifi alive'
  command: response=$(curl -LIk https://172.16.3.205:8443 -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n' -s); test "$response" -ge 200 && echo "on" || echo "off"
  scan_interval: 600
  payload_on: "on"
  payload_off: "off"

You guys figure this out? I tried

- platform: command_line
  name: 'HA is alive'
  command: response=$(curl -LIk http://172.16.3.2:8123 -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -s); test "$response" -ge 200 && echo "on" || echo "off" 
  scan_interval: 90
  value_template: '{{ value }}'

But it keeps returning as “off” even though if I run the command in ssh it returns “on” i am pretty sure it has something to do with quotes

1 Like

Thanks Sejnub !!! Just used your code and working fine ! Thanks

I finally got it to work after looking at the source code here. It expected capitals


- platform: command_line
  name: 'HA is alive'
  command: response=$(curl -LIk -m 3 http://172.16.3.2:8123 -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -s); test "$response" -ge 200 && echo "ON" || echo "OFF" 
  scan_interval: 90
  value_template: '{{ value }}'

I also added -m 3 which is --max-time basically a timeout.

This worked for me!

This looks like a very good solution, however is not working for me :frowning:
I get the following error log message under developer tools:

Command failed: response=$(curl -LIk -m 3 SERVER -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -s); test "$response" -ge 200 && echo "ON" || echo "OFF"

10:52:28 PM – command_line (ERROR) - message first occurred at 10:28:12 PM and shows up 25 times

any ideas?

Maybe https:// , example above used http://

Error in choosing verification method.

-qe
needs to be replaced with
-eq

Working line:

response=$(curl -LIk -m 3 https://******:8123 -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -s); test "$response" -eq 405 && echo "ON" || echo "OFF"

1 Like

I’ve been using this for a while:

binary_sensor:
  - platform: command_line
    name: example.com
    device_class: connectivity
    command: response=$(curl -LIk -m 3 https://example.com -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}\n" -s); test "$response" -eq 200 && echo "ON" || echo "OFF"
    scan_interval: 300
    value_template: '{{ value }}'
5 Likes