Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 11:57:03 -0500 From: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Using `ping' to diagnose network connections reasonable? Message-ID: <199601081657.LAA18245@etinc.com>
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>I'd like to add some code to sysinstall which will attempt to >`diagnose' a link before accepting the configuration parameters, >catching a lot of adapter misconfiguration and incorrect data errors >that sysinstall misses now (to fail less gracefully later). My >question is whether or not `ping' is a reasonable way to measure >connectivity between your host and the gateway & dns machines. Is it >reasonable to assume that if a host supports forwarding or DNS >queries, it will also answer pings? What if you've got pings blocked >somehow but allow DNS traffic through? I wouldn't want to flag a host >as `unreachable' when in fact it would have worked fine for its >intended purpose! That would be worse than no error checking at all. my opinion is that if there is any reasonable chance of false failures then don't do it. Theres nothing more annoying than a program that fails for no good reason. Something that i would like (and if its in there please tell me!). is the ability to escape to a shell to do manual network diagnostics. I've had nfs fail due to minor details and it a real pain to reboot from floppy . I'd also like to use the install procedure to configure the disk and other basic stuff, and then escape to shell, nfs to my server and load my custom system image. Dennis PS: got 2 more BSDI defectors last week....general comments are "BSDI has pissed me off for the last time". ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Emerging Technologies, Inc. http://www.etinc.com Synchronous Communications Cards and Routers For Discriminating Tastes. 56k to T1 and beyond. Frame Relay, PPP, HDLC, and X.25
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