Bash Script Problem

I'm new to scripting, bashing or otherwise But I'm usually a fast learner.

I came across a script which I'm trying to modify for my own environment - the ping command gives a different output than the original script I discovered.

Here's the script:
*************************************
#!/bin/bash
# Report on network ping responses to determine health of devices on network.
# Ping Gateway
ping=`ping -c3 XXX.XXX.XXX.X | tail -2`
loss=`echo $ping |cut -d"," -f3 | cut -d"," -f1`
delay=`echo $ping | cut -d"=" -f2 | cut -d"/" -f1`


if [ "$loss" = "100% packet loss" ] ; then
echo router - XXX.XXX.XXX.X is not responding at all

elif [ "$loss" != "0% packet loss" ] ; then
echo router - XXX.XXX.XXX.X is responding with packet loss

else
if [ "$delay" -lt 100 ]; then
echo router - XXX.XXX.XXX.X is responding normally
else
echo router - XXX.XXX.XXX.X is responding slowly
fi
fi
*************************************

Details:
XXX.XXX.XXX.X is an IP address of my router.

When I run this script, the output is:
"echo router - XXX.XXX.XXX.X is responding with packet loss"

But this should not be. The output in reality is 0% packet loss.

And, during my experiments, I've even added an echo statement:
echo $loss
Which always come back as "0% packet loss"

So, I'm a bit stumped at this behaviour. Pulling my hair out trying to figure what could be wrong.

Other details:
RH 9
Script created in Kate
Bash version: 2.05b.0(1)-release (i386-redhat-linux-gnu)

Thanks guys.. any help would be appreciated.

Laura

Are you running this as a cron job? I wrote a bash script a while back and had some odd behaviour as well. I later found out that environment variables were causing different output on the same command. When I ran the script via telnet it was fine. When it ran automatically, it was completely wrong. Look in that direction if that helps.

Thanks for the reply, Redtailed, but no, I am not running this as a cronjob. I'm running it from the command line.

I still haven't figured it out

Laura