Tag: batch files

PING a sequence of IP addresses from the Command Prompt

Posted on | by brian | Leave a Comment on PING a sequence of IP addresses from the Command Prompt

Have you ever needed to find a free IP address in a given range? Or, have you ever needed to find out which IP addresses in a range are in use? Sure, you can type a bunch of PING commands and note the results. Or, you can loop it:

for /l %i in (96,1,111) do @ping -n 1 10.1.0.%i | find "bytes="

Simply replace the “96” and “111” with the start/end range, and “10.1.0” with the subnet of your choosing. The “1” in the range is the counter, so if you want to skip values, simply change this number. The output will only list those devices which receive a reply from the PING.

If you have multiple subnets, you can loop the loop, like this:

Or, if you want it all in a fancy batch file, paste the following into a batch file (I call it “pingall.bat”).

@echo off
if "%3" EQU ""  (
    echo pingall.bat ^<networkip^> ^<startip^> ^<endip^> [step]
    goto :eof
)
setlocal
set networkip=%1
set startip=%2
set endip=%3
set step=%4
if "%step%" EQU "" set step=1
for /l %%i in (%startip%,%step%,%endip%) do ping -n 1 %networkip%.%%i | find "bytes="
endlocal

To run this, you specify the network (class C only in this example), the start IP, the end IP, and optionally the step (which defaults to 1). Your execution will look something like this.

C:\utils>pingall.bat 10.1.2 211 215
Reply from 10.1.2.214: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 10.1.2.215: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

It’s a quick way to see what’s online in an IP range — and sometimes, that’s exactly what you are looking for.

Batch file to compress and copy a folder

Posted on | by brian | Leave a Comment on Batch file to compress and copy a folder

Recently, I needed to compress all contents of a folder (including subfolders) to an archive file, and copy it to a remote (network) location, all from a command line. In other words, I wanted to do this:

compressAndCopyFolder <sourceFolder> <destinationFolder> <archiveFileName>

Here’s how each parameter would work:

  • sourceFolder is the folder, along with all subfolders, to be added to the archive.
  • destinationFolder is the folder where the archive would be created.
  • archiveFileName is the file name of the archive

I prefer 7zip for archiving, so I could have done this simply using one command:

7z.exe" a -r "%destinationFolder%\%archiveFileName%.7z" %sourceFolder%\*

The problem with this is that it is inefficient to work with a large archive file over the network — there’s a lot of chatter going on to add files to an archive file. Much faster to create the archive locally, then copy the final archive file to the network. So, instead of one command, we have two:

echo off
if "%3"=="" (
	echo usage: 7zfolder ^<sourcefolder^> ^<destinationfolder^> ^<destinationfilename^>
	echo Note: The suffix .7z will be added at the end of destinationFilename.
	goto :eof
)
if not exist "%1" (
	echo ERROR: Source folder does not exist: %1
	goto :eof
)
if not exist "%2" (
	echo ERROR: Destination folder does not exist: %2
	goto :eof
)
if exist "%2\%3.7z" (
	@echo ERROR: Destination file already exists in destination folder: %2\%3
	goto :eof
)

@"c:\Program Files\7-Zip\7z.exe" a -r "%temp%\%3.7z" %1\*
@copy "%temp%\%3.7z" %2\%3.7z /z

Now, from a command line, I just do this…

7zfolder c:\mysource \\myserver\mydest archive

… and all files in c:\mysource will be added to an archive \\myserver\mydest\archive.7z.

Don’t you just love batch files?