For example, try identifying...

• The protocol &/or port over which you're attempting communication
• The OS at both ends of the connection
• Whether the (behaviour of the) remote process is modifiable (in any way)
• What you've tried thus far - in an attempt to reduce effort by eliminating repetition (of solutions you may have already tried)

on *nix systems
'top' command or ps command output
kill -0 pid
heart beats, this method will check the process is functional apart from alive status, heart beats are simple messages(usually program name+timestamp) will be sent to heart beat monitoring(hbm) server through socket, and the duty of the hbm server is to restart that process if no heart beats received for a configured amount of time.
hope this helps

I am able to connect to my process when passing in the process id which I obtained from processinfo.pl..(idea is to grab the new process id and pass it in and then use it to monitor process so it keeps running continuously or something.. ) process info code followed by my process.pl code which is just to connect and tell me exit code as I don't really know yet how to do anything with it. stuff below code is ignorable.

use Win32::Process::Info;
use Data::Dumper;
 $pi = Win32::Process::Info->new ();
 $pi->Set (elapsed_in_seconds => 0);    # In clunks, not seconds.
 @pids = $pi->ListPids ();      # Get all known PIDs
 @info = $pi->GetProcInfo ();   # Get the max
 %subs = $pi->Subprocesses ();  # Figure out subprocess relationships.
 @info = grep {$_->{Name} =~ m/vugen/}
    $pi->GetProcInfo ();        # All processes with 'perl' in name.
#print $info;
#print $pi;

my $href=\%subs;
print Dumper $href;
print Dumper @info;
#print Dumper @pids;
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 use Win32::Process;
    use Win32;

    sub ErrorReport{
        print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
    }

   
 Win32::Process::Open($Obj,$pid=12732,$iflags)|| die ErrorReport();
         print "connected to process $pid ";

       
    $Obj->GetExitCode($exitcode);
    print  $exitcode;
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that sounds very much like what I want to do but how can I do it on a winblows system..(er I mean windows). I am looking at win32 process, but it's not clear how to export "still-active" I manage to get a bit over my head on this one,how do I explicitly export? so far I haven't gotten much, trying to figure out how to tell if still_active or setup a heartbeat or something. I can get it to launch but not to open my script.

use Win32::Process;
    use Win32;

    sub ErrorReport{
        print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
    }

    Win32::Process::Create($ProcessObj,
                                "C:\\program files\\Mercury\\LoadRunne
+r\\bin\\vugen.exe",
                                "E:\\Mibor_timingtest\\Mibor\\mibor.us
+r",
                                0,
                                NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
                                ".")|| die ErrorReport();

 Win32::Process::Open($Obj,$pid=11672,$iflags)|| die ErrorReport();


    $ProcessObj->Suspend();
    $ProcessObj->Resume();
    $ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE);
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I am trying to figure this out has anyone used before? I get 259 as my exit code what does that mean?

use Win32::Process;
    use Win32;

    sub ErrorReport{
        print Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
    }

   
 Win32::Process::Open($Obj,$pid=11672,$iflags)|| die ErrorReport();
         print "connected to process $pid";

    #$ProcessObj->Suspend();
    #$ProcessObj->Resume();
    #$ProcessObj->Wait(INFINITE);
     
    $Obj->GetExitCode($exitcode);
    print $exitcode;
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ssh that.server ps -flags | grep that_process
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Hmmm ,

That's all very well, graff, but it can only identify the situation whereby the remote server process has stopped running.

I'm guessing, since the OP hasn't (yet) responded to a couple of requests for further information, that the OP has encountered the situation whereby the process appears to be running but is no longer responding to connection requests...hence either the heartbeat or polled approach (as mentioned elsewhere) would be the logical solution.

A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

You can just periodically send test requests to the server. If you elaborate a bit more on your problem you probably would get a better answer.