KDE network utilities
This documentation was written for knu version
0.1.1. Please make any comments to the author.
Table of contents:
Presentation
The KDE network utilities program allows you to make a ping,
a traceroute or an host resolution without lauching a terminal emulator.
You choose which utility you want to run by selecting the
corresponding tab. You give the parameters needed for it and then
click on the "Go!" button (or hit return). While the
command is running, you can stop it by pushing the "Stop" button.
A right mouse click on the output window opens a menu from which you can
- copy the selected text to the cliboard or
- clear the output window.
The ping tab
What is it?
The ping(8) command send ICMP
ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts to check for network
reachability. A response from a host (or anything that have an IP
address) says that this host is running at least a TCP/IP network
stack and indicates that the network route to go to this host is
opened. The ping tab allows the execution of the
ping(8) command.
Description
Ping uses the ICMP protocol's mandatory ECHO_REQUEST datagram
to elicit an ICMP ECHO_RESPONSE from a host or gateway.
ECHO_REQUEST datagrams (``pings'') have an IP and ICMP header,
followed by a struct timeval and then an arbitrary number of
pad bytes used to fill out the packet.
When using ping for fault isolation, it should first be run on the
local host, to verify that the local network interface is up and
running. Then, hosts and gateways further and further away should be
``pinged''. Round-trip times and packet loss statistics are
computed. If duplicate packets are received, they are not included in
the packet loss calculation, although the round trip time of these
packets is used in calculating the minimum/average/maximum
round-trip time numbers. When the program is terminated, a brief
summary is displayed.
This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and
management. Because of the load it can impose on the network, it is
unwise to use ping during normal operations or for too long.
The traceroute tab
What is it?
The traceroute(8) command print
the route that packets take to network host. The traceroute tab
allows the execution of the traceroute(8) command.
Description
The Internet is a large and complex aggregation of network hardware,
connected together by gateways. Tracking the route one's packets
follow (or finding the miscreant gateway that's discarding your
packets) can be difficult. Traceroute utilizes the IP protocol
time to live field and attempts to elicit an ICMP
TIME_EXCEEDED response from each gateway along the path to
some host.
Options:
- Host name resolution
Print hop addresses numerically rather than symbolically and
numerically (this saves a nameserver address-to-name lookup for each
gateway found on the path).
- Max number of hops
Set the max time-to-live (maximum number of hops) used in outgoing
probe packets. The default is 30 hops (the same default used for
TCP connections).
This program attempts to trace the route an IP packet would follow to
some internet host by launching UDP probe packets with a small ttl
(time to live) then listening for an ICMP "time exceeded"
reply from a gateway. We start our probes with a ttl of one and
increase by one until we get an ICMP "port unreachable"
(which means we got to "host") or hit a max (which defaults to
30 hops and can be changed with the Max number of hops option).
Three probes are sent at each ttl setting and a line is printed
showing the ttl, address of the gateway and round trip time of each
probe. If the probe answers come from different gateways, the address
of each responding system will be printed. If there is no response
within a 3 sec. timeout interval, a "*" is printed for that probe.
We don't want the destination host to process the UDP probe packets so
the destination port is set to an unlikely value.
This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and
management. It should be used primarily for manual fault isolation.
Because of the load it could impose on the network, it is unwise to
use traceroute during normal operations or for too long.
Traceroute's authors
Implemented by Van Jacobson from a suggestion by Steve Deering. Debugged
by a cast of thousands with particularly cogent suggestions or fixes from
C. Philip Wood, Tim Seaver and Ken Adelman.
The host resolution tab
What is it?
The host resolution tab
allows the execution of the host(8) command.
The host(8) command...
Description
In the next version...
Configuration
You can configure the pathname of the command used by KDE network
utilities if you don't want the command found in the PATH
variable to be used.
In your file $KDEDIR/config/knurc or
~/.kde/config/knurc, add:
[traceroute]
path=/usr/sbin/traceroute
The group name in the config file is the tab name.
Authors
Bertrand Leconte <B.Leconte@mail.dotcom.fr>
class KProcess: Christian Czezatke <e9025461@student.tuwien.ac.at>
widget Hello: this is a part of a Qt 1.2 example (http://www.troll.no)
The documentation comes mainly from the Linux ping(8) and
traceroute(8) man pages.
Copyright
This program is published under the GNU General Public License
version 2 or later.