On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 01:33:01PM +0200, Timothy Murphy wrote:

Some weeks ago, I asked if anyone had set up a backup scheme for a remote server. By backup here, I mean an alternative arrangement that can be called upon if eg the DSL connection to the remote machine fails.

I received one interesting reply:

At home, besides my fixed lines, I have two gsm-modems, one low-speed (that came free of charge with one of my fixed lines), the other is high speed, but pre-paid, normally off) ====================== I meant to respond at the time, asking for further details, but forgot, and now I have lost the original message.

I think that the original thread was on users@lists.fedoraproject.org:

http://www.spinics.net/linux/fedora/fedora-users/msg435811.html

In case the web/CLI interface of DSL modem/router is still responsive, you can script a reboot from the server on the LAN when fails the ping to a set of well-know always-up hosts.

I resuscitate this way a D-Link DSL-320B with (snippet):

# Set both international and national hosts. hosts="www.google.com www.yahoo.com www.libero.it www.telecom.it"

for h in $hosts; do ping -c 2 "$h" > /dev/null 2>&1 && { # Success retval=0 break }

echo "Ping failed for ${h}." retval=1 # Failure done

test "$retval" -ne 0 && { echo -e "\nResetting the ADSL modem." phantomjs adsl-reboot.js }

adsl-reboot.js is a Javascript script that logins onto the modem and "clicks" the reset button.

You can also play with the -w option if your ping supports it. The default timeout is 10 seconds or so.

Mihai