Watchcat + advanced reboot

Greetings,

I've got a few 3200acm devices I manage and I have an idea or looking for a solution to combine watchcat with advanced reboot. Currently watchcat will reboot my router when there is no internet detected after a few minutes but I want it to now also boot to my alternative partition after 3 consecutive watchcat reboots due to failed internet connectivity. This of course requires that your alternative partition is also setup accordingly and has this watchcat modification.

My idea is based on these multi partition linksys 3200acm routers that automatically reboot to the alternative partition if 3 unsuccessful bootup attempts occur and I want an option that extends that out to include internet outages. In the end they will ping back and forth from main/backup partitions if there is no internet connection detected.

I'm not the greatest programmer but as of now, I've thought of modifying watchcat to keep a log for each time a failed ping occurs and on the 6th mark (2 failed pings per reboot), run the command required to boot to the alternative partition and remove the marking file before rebooting. It's simple but i'd be willing to share it once i made it.

Are you sure that rebooting (and to a different partition) is the right solution for a network outage?

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In my case, I am sure. I am usually remote. It may not be the right solution for everyone but a reboot is my last line of defense when things don't resolve themselves naturally.

A reboot into an alternative partition allows me to pre-configure safer and more reliable settings to dial home so I can fix it or have a safe partition in the meantime where i can run diagnostics if something at the remote site happens like maintenance or disaster. I can reboot back into the leaner and speedier partition once the issues have been resolved and worked out.

I understand it may be a special case but I've done this in the past successfully, however, instead of a script rebooting to my safer partition, its traditionally been a phonecall to have the router rebooted 4x in a row.