How can I monitor a URL and then email myself a traceroute if something goes wrong?

Question

I found a script online that I thought was going to do what I needed, but I can't get it to work as my PERL skills are pretty low. Basically, I need to monitor this URL on apple.com and make sure the download form is available, and if it isn't available, I need to receive an email saying that the form isn't available from $hostname, here is the traceroute from that host. The traceroute is important because Apple uses Akamai and some GeoIP magic for their downloads.

I'm open to keeping this script and adding on to it or doing it another way. Thanks for taking the time to look at this for me. I'll be sure to share the finished result when I'm done. I'm pretty sure this script will be useful to more than just myself. ;)

EDIT 5/8/2011 I just updated the script to reflect my recent changes.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;

# local hostname
my $hostname = `/bin/hostname`;

# setup array of servers/websites to check
my @sitestocheck = ('swdlp.apple.com');

# the relative url of the website response script in each site
my $responseprogram = "/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SoftwareDownloadApp.woa/wa/getProductData?localang=en_us&grp_code=quicktime&returnURL=http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download";

# path to the log file with the response data
my $statusdir = "./tmp";

# mail feature
my $mailprog ='/usr/sbin/sendmail';
my $adminmail = 'root@localhost';
my $frommail = 'root@$hostname';

###############################################################
# End Configuration                                           #
###############################################################
# main program
use Crypt::SSLeay;
use LWP::UserAgent;

# now check each url in your array
foreach my $sitetocheck (@sitestocheck)
{
    my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
    my $req = new HTTP::Request 'GET',"https://$sitetocheck$responseprogram";
    my $res = $ua->request($req);
    if ($res->is_success) 
    {
        if ($res->content =~ m/Quicktime/i)
        {
             my $response = "SERVER OK:$sitetocheck:".$res->content;}
        else
        {
            my $response = "Our apologies but there was an unexpected error with the application. This problem has been noted, and an email has been sent to the administrators. Please check back in a few hours to try the download again. ";
        }
    }
    else
    {
        my $timestamp = localtime;
        my $response = "WARNING! $hostname UNABLE TO CONNECT TO $sitetocheck at $timestamp";
        my $traceroute = `/usr/sbin/traceroute $sitetocheck`;
    }
    # write server status to the main log file
    open(FILE,">>$statusdir/statuslog.txt");
    flock(FILE, 2);
    print FILE "$response\n$traceroute\n\n";
    flock(FILE, 8);

    # write to a current status file for each server or website
    # being monitored
    open(FILE,">$statusdir/$sitetocheck");
    flock(FILE, 2);
    print FILE $response;
    flock(FILE, 8);
}

# if there is an error mail the administrator
if (my $response =~ m/apologies/i)
{
    open( MAIL, "|$mailprog -t" );
    print MAIL "Subject: $hostname unable to connect to $sitetocheck\n";
    print MAIL "From: $frommail\n";
    print MAIL "To: $adminmail\n";
    print MAIL "Reply-to: $frommail\n\n";
    print MAIL "$response\n$traceroute";
    print MAIL "\n\n";
    close MAIL;
}