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Date:      Wed, 26 Aug 1998 11:03:16 -0400
From:      Brian Cully <shmit@kublai.com>
To:        Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, Matt Dillon <dillon@FreeBSD.ORG>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sbin/ping ping.8 ping.c
Message-ID:  <19980826110316.61684@kublai.com>
In-Reply-To: <19980826143454.03686@follo.net>; from Eivind Eklund on Wed, Aug 26, 1998 at 02:34:54PM %2B0200
References:  <199808260158.SAA07564@freefall.freebsd.org> <19980826143454.03686@follo.net>

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On Wed, Aug 26, 1998 at 02:34:54PM +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 25, 1998 at 06:58:41PM -0700, Matt Dillon wrote:
> >>>  -c count limited to 100 and defaults to 16 when ping run
> >>>       by non-root user.
> 
> Eh - does this mean that I have to su to root to be able to run a
> continious ping?  This is IMO a step backwards - we commonly use ping
> to find out if something (netwise close) is up yet.  I can see its use
> for public shell servers, but for the way we use FreeBSD here, it will
> be a hinder (employees are the only ones that have access to execute
> anything; if somebody abuse it, I talk to them - if necessary, loudly
> :-)

I agree, we frequently use ping to detect when a machine has come
back up from a remote reboot, and needing to be root to do so would be
a hinderance. Moreover, from the sound of things, you can only ping
100 times as root, which may not be enough (POST on a UE450 can take
forever :-)).

Then there's ping's invaluable-ness when dealing with crappy 3com
linkswitches (which lose ARP entries if it hasn't seen traffic from
a machine for a while). Being root to do that is less than ideal, as well.

I don't see unlimited pinging being a problem as long as Joe User can't
use the -f or -s flags.

-- 
Brian Cully						<shmit@erols.com>
``And when one of our comrades was taken prisoner, blindfolded, hung
  upside-down, shot, and burned, we thought to ourselves, `These are the
  best experiences of our lives''' -Pathology (Joe Frank, Somewhere Out There)



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