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.\"

.\"  

.TH fping 1M "29 Feb 2008" "SunOS 5.11" "System Administration Commands"

.SH NAME

fping \- send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B fping

[ \fIoptions\fR ]

[ \fIsystems...\fR ]

.SH DESCRIPTION

.NXR "fping command"

.NXR "ICMP ECHO_REQUEST"

.B fping 

is a 

.B ping

like program which uses the Internet Control

Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a target host is

responding. 

.B fping 

differs from ping in that you can specify any

number of targets on the command line, or specify a file containing

the lists of targets to ping. Instead of sending to one target until it

times out or replies, 

.B fping 

will send out a ping packet and move

on to the next target in a round-robin fashion. 

.PP

In the default mode, if a target replies,

it is noted and removed from the list of targets to check; if a target

does not respond within a certain time limit and/or retry limit it 

is designated as unreachable.  

.B fping 

also supports sending a specified number of pings to a target, or

looping indefinitely (as in 

.B ping

).

.PP

Unlike 

.B ping

,

.B fping 

is meant to be used in scripts, so its output is designed to be 

easy to parse.

.SH OPTIONS

.IP \fB-a\fR 5

Show systems that are alive.

.IP \fB-A\fR 5

Display targets by address rather than DNS name.

.IP \fB-b\fIn\fR 5

Number of bytes of ping data to send.  The minimum size (normally 12)

allows room for the data that 

.B fping 

needs to do its work (sequence number, timestamp).  The reported

received data size includes the IP header (normally 20 bytes) and ICMP

header (8 bytes), so the minimum total size is 40 bytes.  Default is

56, as in 

.B ping.

Maximum is the theoretical maximum IP datagram size (64K), though most

systems limit this to a smaller, system-dependent number.

.IP \fB-B\fIn\fR 5

In the default mode,

.B fping

sends several requests to a target before giving up, waiting longer for

a reply on each successive request.  This parameter is the value by

which the wait time is multiplied on each successive request; it must

be entered as a floating-point number (x.y).  The default is 1.5.

.IP \fB-c\fR 5

Number of request packets to send to each target.  In this mode, a

line is displayed for each received response (this can suppressed with

-q or -Q).  Also, statistics about responses for each target are displayed

when all requests have been sent (or when interrupted).

.IP \fB-C\fR 5

Similar to -c, but the per-target statistics are displayed in a format

designed for automated response-time statistics gathering.  For

example:

% fping -C 5 -q somehost

somehost : 91.7 37.0 29.2 - 36.8

shows the response time in milliseconds for each of the five requests,

with the "-" indicating that no response was received to the fourth

request.

.IP \fB-d\fR 5

Use gethostbyaddr(3NSL) to lookup address of return ping packet. This allows you to give

fping a list of IP addresses as input and print hostnames in the output.

.IP \fB-e\fR 5

Show elapsed (round-trip) time of packets.

.IP \fB-f\fR 5

Read list of targets from a file.  

% fping < targets_file

.IP \fB-g\fR 5

Generate a target list from a supplied IP netmask, or a starting and ending IP.

Specify the netmask or start/end in the targets portion of the command line.

ex. To ping the class C 192.168.1.x, the specified command line could look like either:

fping -g 192.168.1.0/24

or

fping -g 192.168.1.0 192.168.1.255

.IP \fB-h\fR 5

Print usage message.

.IP \fB-i\fIn\fR 5

The minimum amount of time (in milliseconds) between sending a ping packet to any target (default is 25).

.IP \fB-l\fR 5

Loop sending packets to each target indefinitely.  Can be interrupted

with ctl-C; statistics about responses for each target are then displayed.

.IP \fB-m\fR 5

Send pings to each of a target host's multiple interfaces.

.IP \fB-n\fR 5

Same as -d.

.IP \fB-p\fR 5

In looping or counting modes (-l, -c, or -C), this parameter sets the

time in milliseconds that

.B fping

waits between successive packets to an individual target.  Default is

1000.

.IP \fB-q\fR 5

Quiet. Don't show per-target results, just set final exit status.

.IP \fB-Q\fIn\fR 5

Like -q, but show summary results every n seconds.

.IP \fB-r\fIn\fR 5

Retry limit (default 3). This is the number of times an attempt at pinging

a target will be made, not including the first try.

.IP \fB-s\fR 5

Print cumulative statistics upon exit.

.IP \fB-t\fIn\fR 5

Initial target timeout in milliseconds (default 500). In the default

mode, this is the amount of time that 

.B fping

waits for a response to its first request.  Successive timeouts are

multiplied by the backoff factor.

.IP \fB-u\fR 5

Show targets that are unreachable.

.IP \fB-v\fR 5

Print 

.B fping

version information.

.SH EXAMPLES

The following perl script will check a list of hosts and send mail if

any are unreachable. It uses the open2 function which allows a program

to be opened for reading and writing. fping does not start pinging the

list of systems until it reads EOF, which it gets after INPUT is closed. 

Sure the open2 usage is not needed in this example, but it's a good open2

example none the less. 

.nf

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

require 'open2.pl';

$MAILTO = "root";

$pid = &open2("OUTPUT","INPUT","/usr/local/bin/fping -u");

@check=("slapshot","foo","foobar");

foreach(@check) {  print INPUT "$_\\n"; }

close(INPUT);

@output=<OUTPUT>;

if ($#output != -1) {

 chop($date=`date`);

 open(MAIL,"|mail -s 'unreachable systems' $MAILTO");

 print MAIL "\\nThe following systems are unreachable as of: $date\\n\\n";

 print MAIL @output;

 close MAIL;

}

.ni

Another good example is when you want to perform an action only on hosts

that are currently reachable.

.nf

#!/usr/local/bin/perl

$hosts_to_backup = `cat /etc/hosts.backup | fping -a`;

foreach $host (split(/\\n/,$hosts_to_backup)) {

  # do it

}

.ni

.LP

The following is an output example: 

.sp

\fB% fping a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.3\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com is alive

x.y.z.net is alive

192.168.0.1 is alive

192.168.0.3 is alive

.fi

.in -2

.sp

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-a' option: 

.sp

\fB% fping -a a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.3\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com

x.y.z.net

192.168.0.1

192.168.0.3

.fi

.in -2

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-c' option: 

.sp

\fb% fping -c 3 a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com		: [0], 84 bytes, 51.1 ms (51.1 avg, 0% loss)

192.168.0.1	: [0], 84 bytes, 0.08 ms (0.08 avg, 0% loss) [<- 192.168.0.4]

x.y.z.net 	: [0], 84 bytes, 70.6 ms (70.6 avg, 0% loss)

a.b.com		: [1], 84 bytes, 60.9 ms (56.0 avg, 0% loss)

192.168.0.1	: [1], 84 bytes, 0.09 ms (0.08 avg, 0% loss) [<- 192.168.0.4]

a.b.com		: [2], 84 bytes, 40.6 ms (50.9 avg, 0% loss)

192.168.0.1	: [2], 84 bytes, 0.11 ms (0.09 avg, 0% loss) [<- 192.168.0.4]

x.y.z.net		: [2], 84 bytes, 68.8 ms (69.7 avg, 33% loss)

.sp

a.b.com		: xmt/rcv/%loss = 3/3/0%, min/avg/max = 40.6/50.9/60.9

x.y.z.net		: xmt/rcv/%loss = 3/2/33%, min/avg/max = 68.8/69.7/70.6

192.168.0.1	: xmt/rcv/%loss = 3/3/0%, min/avg/max = 0.08/0.09/0.11

.fi

.in -2

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-C' option: 

.sp

\fb% fping -C 3 a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com		: [0], 84 bytes, 41.7 ms (41.7 avg, 0% loss)

x.y.z.net		: [0], 84 bytes, 66.6 ms (66.6 avg, 0% loss)

a.b.com		: [1], 84 bytes, 50.7 ms (46.2 avg, 0% loss)

x.y.z.net		: [1], 84 bytes, 62.6 ms (64.6 avg, 0% loss)

a.b.com		: [2], 84 bytes, 44.9 ms (45.8 avg, 0% loss)

x.y.z.net		: [2], 84 bytes, 69.5 ms (66.2 avg, 0% loss)

.sp

a.b.com		: 41.74 50.72 44.94

x.y.z.net		: 66.69 62.63 69.52

192.168.0.1	: - - -

.fi

.in -2

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-e' option: 

.sp

\fb% fping -e a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com is alive (18.9 ms)

x.y.z.net is alive (9.51 ms)

192.168.0.1 is alive (0.35 ms)

.fi

.in -2

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-g' option: 

.sp

\fb% fping -g 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.6\fR

.in +2

.nf

192.168.0.0 is alive [<- 192.168.0.4]

192.168.0.4 is alive

192.168.0.1 is unreachable

192.168.0.2 is unreachable

192.168.0.3 is unreachable

192.168.0.5 is unreachable

192.168.0.6 is unreachable

.fi

.in -2

.LP

The following is an output example using the '-s' option: 

.sp

\fb% fping -s a.b.com x.y.z.net 192.168.0.1\fR

.in +2

.nf

a.b.com is alive

x.y.z.net is alive

192.168.0.1 is unreachable

       3 targets

       2 alive

       1 unreachable

       0 unknown addresses

       4 timeouts (waiting for response)

       6 ICMP Echos sent

       2 ICMP Echo Replies received

       0 other ICMP received

 46.1 ms (min round trip time)

 58.7 ms (avg round trip time)

 71.3 ms (max round trip time)

        4.153 sec (elapsed real time)

.fi

.in -2

.SH AUTHORS

.nf

Roland J. Schemers III, Stanford University, concept and versions 1.x

RL "Bob" Morgan, Stanford University, versions 2.x

ZeroHype Technologies Inc. (http://www.zerohype.com), versions 2.3x and up,

fping website:  http://www.fping.com

.ni

.SH DIAGNOSTICS

Exit status is 0 if all the hosts are reachable, 1 if some hosts were

unreachable, 2 if any IP addresses were not found, 3 for invalid

command line arguments, and 4 for a system call failure.

.SH BUGS

Ha! If we knew of any we would have fixed them!

.SH RESTRICTIONS

Successful execution of this program requires that it be granted

the net_icmpaccess privilege.

.ni

.SH SEE ALSO

netstat(1M), ping(1M), ifconfig(1M), rbac(5), privileges(5)