Network item - using WOL blocks status about misterhouse HOT 4 OPEN

Answering myself...

The issue seems to be that using a 'set' command nearly always kills the ping timer associated with that network item, so killing the monitor for good, as it is only started once in 'new'. The timer is stored in the Network Item object as 'timer' here:
$self->{timer} = new Timer;
But Network Item inherits 'Generic_item' functions, so appears to conflict with an existing variable by the same name.

Working (proposed solution: rename the variable)

$self->{nw_ping_timer} = new Timer;
$self->{nw_ping_timer}->set( $interval, sub { Network_Item::ping_check($self); }, -1 );

While I'm here, the 'default_setstate' function isn't used, and this code in 'setstate_start' doesn't do anything useful, and if it did what was intended, I think not desirable as it assumes actual state which is not necessarily true (may be already 'up' when a start is actioned).

if ( $self->state eq "start" ) {
     $state eq "down";
     $self->set($state);
 }

from misterhouse.

from misterhouse.

I think once-upon-a-time it might have made sense to change the network states to ON and OFF for uniformity, but probably not now as a) there's plenty of code out there that would need to be changed, b) ON and OFF may possibly have been used as well as 'up' and 'down' (by others, considering generic item inheritance), and c) there are many items that use special values in the state variable to indicate various conditions - it's not so unusual.

from misterhouse.

And one more for this item...
At least in Linux systems - this tiny change stops all the "Name or service not known" logspam on the terminal when network items are offline:
$self->{process} = new Process_Item( $ping_test_cmd . $address . " 2>&1 | grep ttl" );

from misterhouse.