How to check if ZooKeeper is running or up from command prompt?

To check if Zookeeper is accessible. One method is to simply telnet to the proper port and execute the stats command.

root@host:~# telnet localhost 2181
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to myhost.
Escape character is '^]'.
stats
Zookeeper version: 3.4.3-cdh4.0.1--1, built on 06/28/2012 23:59 GMT
Clients:

Latency min/avg/max: 0/0/677
Received: 4684478
Sent: 4687034
Outstanding: 0
Zxid: 0xb00187dd0
Mode: leader
Node count: 127182
Connection closed by foreign host.

One other way would be to use 4 letter commands to validate if zookeeper service is healthy or not

echo stat | nc <zookeeper ip> 2181
echo mntr | nc <zookeeper ip> 2181
echo isro  | nc <zookeeper ip> 2181

More details on the documentation link below https://zookeeper.apache.org/doc/r3.1.2/zookeeperAdmin.html#sc_zkCommands