watchcat: option to suspend processing if target iface is down

Maintainer: @\mips171
Environment: OpenWRT 22.03, ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)

Description:
Suggest a config option and a checkbox in luci that, when checked, prevents ping attempts and interface restarts when the interface is down. This is useful for a wired interface which is my specific use case. My current hardware doesn’t properly detect wired cable removal. Watchcat works fine when the cable is plugged in and the interface is up. When the Cable is removed, watchcat attempts to restart the interface and it works well. Since there is no cable the interface stays down as it should. However watchcat continues to try to ping and restarts this interface every 60 seconds. The interface is down so certainly pings will fail.

watchcat in this case doesn’t need to ping and doesn’t need to restart the iface. Connect the cable again and the iface starts up and watchcat can again start to monitor.

can this feature request be considered?

Start by locating the watchcat implementation and its LuCI configuration and review how interface state, ping attempts, and restarts are handled. Define the option and checkbox behavior so that a checked setting skips monitoring while the target interface is down and resumes when it is up; verify the existing behavior remains unchanged when unchecked.