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.
Options:
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.
Options:
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.
By default, the command simply converts between host names and Internet addresses. However, with the Search for options, it can be used to find all of the information about domain names that is maintained by the domain nameserver system. The information printed consists of various fields of the associated resource records that were retrieved.
The host field can be either host names (domain names) or numeric Internet addresses.
A numeric Internet address consists of four decimal numbers separated by dots, e.g. 192.16.199.1, representing the four bytes of the 32-bit address. The default action is to look up the associated host name.
A host name or domain name consists of component names (labels) separated by dots, e.g. nikhefh.nikhef.nl. The default action is to look up all of its Internet addresses.
For single names without a trailing dot, the local domain is automatically tacked on the end. Thus a user in domain nikhef.nl can type in nikhapo, and it will actually look up nikhapo.nikhef.nl. In all other cases, the name is tried unchanged. Single names with trailing dot are considered top-level domain specifications, e.g. nl.
For a more precise description of the behaviour of this command, please see the underlying program's man-page host(1) or nslookup(8).
Options:
A | the host's Internet address. |
PTR | the host name. |
NS | the name server for the named zone. |
MX | the mail exchanger. |
CNAME | the canonical name for an alias. |
SOA | the domain's ``start-of-authority'' information. |
ANY | all informations available. |
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 or if the command in not found the the PATH. This can be done in the Edit -> Preferences... menu. You can also add arguments to the program. For example, on Sun Solaris computers, you can add -s as argument.
For the host resolution tab, you will have to choose the type of the underlying command used, host or nslookup.
You can disable a command by editing the configuration file (by hand) and in the corresponding group, just modify to read enable = 0.
Authors
Bertrand Leconte <B.Leconte@mail.dotcom.fr>
The documentation comes mainly from the Linux ping(8), traceroute(8), host(1) and nslookup(8) man pages.
Copyright
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.