How to get response time of server / website with PRTG

Last updated on August 14, 2021

With PRTG monitoring you can do various things, today I’ll show you how to create custom SSH sensor and monitor response time of server/website or anything you want.
In order to do so, you need to create two files:

1. Create a new file, curl-format.txt, and paste in:

     time_namelookup:  %{time_namelookup}s\n
        time_connect:  %{time_connect}s\n
     time_appconnect:  %{time_appconnect}s\n
    time_pretransfer:  %{time_pretransfer}s\n
       time_redirect:  %{time_redirect}s\n
  time_starttransfer:  %{time_starttransfer}s\n
                     ----------\n
          time_total:  %{time_total}s\n

2. Create ssh scipt, responsetime.sh, and paste in:

#!/bin/bash

time=$(curl -w "@/var/prtg/scripts/curl-format.txt" -o /dev/null -s "127.0.0.1:80" |grep time_total |cut -c 24-|cut -d "s" -f1)
ms=$(echo "$time 1000" |awk '{print $1 * $2}')
echo "0:$ms:OK"

! make script executable by:

chmod +x responsetime.sh

# curl-format.txt is needed to set time variables for curl reuquest
# in responsetime.sh we make request to 127.0.0.1 port 80, it outputs in seconds, so then we multiple the output on 1000 to get the output in ms

3. Move curl-format.txt and responsetime.sh to /var/prtg/scripts folder on the target server and navigate to your PRTG web

4. Add new SSH script sensor to your device 

• Type the name of new sensor
• In SENSOR SETTINGS -> Script – choose our script responsetime.sh
• Unit String – ms
• Value Type – Float (!it’s important to choose float, otherwise sensor wont work)
• ContinueThe result will look as follow:
• Do not forget to set sensor limits and you are good to go.