Test server status by connecting?

Test server status by connecting?

Hi all,

Im afraid I know very little about PHP so am looking for help here.

I understand that PHP is really the only solution to do this, so any inout from you guys would be very helpful.

I am looking for a simple solution that will tell me on a webpage if my FTP server is up or down. IE 'Server is up' or 'Server is down' will suffice...

I have looked around and found a couple of scripts, but seem to always say that it is up even if it is down (ironically, one always says down!). But none of them actually check by connecting to it by logging on...

So... How can I get a (reliable) yes/no response to include in a webpage whether my FTP server is running or not?

ANy help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance.