Subject: Re: inetutils ping not present but portable
From: Sam Edge <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:14:51 +0100

Corinna Vinschen wrote in <[email-masked]>
in gmane.os.cygwin on Wed, 16 Apr 2003 15:48:15 +0200:

> On Wed, Apr 16, 2003 at 03:28:10PM +0200, David Strobach wrote:
> > Is there any special reason for ping not to be present in inteutils port? I
> > have successfully compiled ping from inetutils-1.4.2 with no changes to
> > source code.
> 
> ping isn't present in 1.3.2.  Also ping is included by default in all
> Windows systems.

Well, /a/ ping is included, although it's a pretty poor version
compared to most. (Very granular timing, lack of broadcast option,
etc., etc.)

A port of a POSIX-style source should be pretty straightforward but a
problem is that it opens raw sockets to generate/receive the ICMP
datagrams and so needs to be suid-root for normal user accounts to be
able to use it.

On NT/2k/XP Cygwin's suid doesn't (yet? cygserver?) work for normal
user accounts so a ported ping command would only work from an
Administrative one.

Microsoft's ping.exe gets around this by using the system icmp.dll
that provides a limited ICMP datagram send/receive facility without
needing enhanced privileges.

I've been thinking about writing a better ping.exe using this for a
while now, but have never gotten around to it.

-- 
Sam Edge

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