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Date:      9 Apr 1997 13:51:00 GMT
From:      peter@spinner.DIALix.COM (Peter Wemm)
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: new ping option
Message-ID:  <860593860.311485@haywire.DIALix.COM>
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.970408210837.303B-100000@jg.dyn.ml.org>

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In article <403.860578676@time.cdrom.com>,
	jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) writes:
>> I'd like to see a new ping option which does the opposite of -a; includes
>> a bell character when the packet is lost. -A seems to be the proper name 
>> for such an option.
> 
> This whole direction for ping is a complete and total crock. :-(

Well, heck, I _like_ it and use it a lot! :-]  It's already saved me loads
of time while waiting for machines to boot.
 
> If you want to make this general, have ping(1) return a status on a
> single failure or a single success, then choosing to beep, fart,
> whistle, flash or provide whatever form of notification most pleases
> you.  There is NO reason I can see for building this behavior into
> ping, and whomever added the beep (well, OK, it was Bruce Murphy - CVS
> doesn't allow you to play coy very convincingly about this kind of
> thing :-) should probably be shot at dawn, but I suppose we could also
> spare him and simply back out that most un-UNIX-like change to
> ping. :-)

Well, how would the semantics work?  Send a single ping, wait for a maximum
of 'n' seconds and return a status?  There is a program called fping (now
a port) that already does this, and can do multiple machines at once.

peter@spinner[9:48pm] fping -t 300 haywire spinner nuclear
spinner is alive
haywire is alive
nuclear is unreachable
peter@spinner[9:48pm] echo $?
1
peter@spinner[9:48pm] fping -t 300 haywire
haywire is alive
peter@spinner[9:49pm] echo $?
0
peter@spinner[9:49pm]#

> 					Jordan

Cheers,
-Peter (With his "I don't care if it's bloat, I like it!" hat on :-)



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