shutdownd is a simple daemon that records the current time in /tmp/shutdown.time whenever a UDP packet arrives on the port it's listening on. I use it for shutting down my file server automatically when my workstation, being turned off, no longer sends packets. If you want to use it for that purpose you'll probably want to run shutdownd-checker.pl or an equivalent script via cron. Apart from that you could use it for pretty much any sort of application that requires some kind of dead man's switch. If you use it for a purpose other than the original one feel free to email me about it ;-) For sending UDP packets you can use anything that's capable of sending UDP packets to the port shutdownd is listening on. On my home page you will also find shutdownc, a simple program that sends one UDP packet to the specified destination on invocation. Installation: % ./configure # is where you want executables to # be installed, default is /usr/local % make % /bin/su -c "make install" Usage: shutdownd [listen adress] [port] [timestamp file] By default shutdownd will bind to 0.0.0.0, port 2342 and write timestamp to /tmp/shutdownd.time Portability: Compiles and runs on FreeBSD and Linux. Other unixoid systems shouldn't pose much of a problem either. If they do tell me about it, or better yet send a patch ;-) Contact information: Johannes Grassler http://btw23.de/johannes/ GPG key fingerprint: pub 1024D/1FCB4CF3 2002-07-03 Key fingerprint = 5CAF DF5C A5E8 69EA B7C9 2FD9 ADD9 6BF3 1FCB 4CF3 Copyright (c) 2007 Johannes Grassler. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Artistic License.