way to list pools?

As with your "set POOLS {}" list example, you can enumerate the pool names from a class. If you use an external class you can use an external monitor script to modify that file at intervals. You'll need to do a "b load" in the script once the file is created, so I'd probably set the monitor on an unused pool and set it to some long interval, perhaps once a day.

So the class might look like this:

 
 "apache_pool", 
 "iis_pool", 
 "coldfusion_pool", 
 "java_pool", 
 

In v10 the iRule might look like this:

 
 when HTTP_REQUEST { 
   set response "BIGIP Pool Status - [clock format [clock seconds]]"  
   if { [HTTP::uri] eq "/status" } { 
     foreach { selectedpool } [class get pooltest] { 
       set thispool [getfield $selectedpool " " 1] 
       if {  [catch {  
         if { [active_members $thispool] < 1 } { 
           set response "$response DOWN - $thispool
"   
         } else { 
           set response "$response UP - $thispool
" 
         } 
       } errmsg ] } { 
         set response "$response INVALID POOL NAME - $thispool
" 
       } 
     } 
     set response "$response " 
     HTTP::respond 200 content $response "Content-Type" "text/html" 
   }   
 } 
 

Kevin