NAME

       xymonping - Xymon ping tool

SYNOPSIS

       xymonping [--retries=N] [--timeout=N] [IP-addresses]

DESCRIPTION

       xymonping(1)  is used for ping testing of the hosts monitored by the xymon(7) monitoring system. It reads
       a list of IP addresses from stdin, and performs a "ping" check to see if these hosts are  alive.   It  is
       normally invoked by the xymonnet(1) utility, which performs all of the Xymon network tests.

       Optionally,  if  a  list  of  IP-addresses  is  passed as command-line arguments, it will ping those IP's
       instead of reading them from stdin.

       xymonping only handles IP-addresses, not hostnames.

       xymonping was inspired by the fping(1) tool, but has been written from scratch to implement a  fast  ping
       tester  without  much of the overhead found in other such utilities. The output from xymonping is similar
       to that of "fping -Ae".

       xymonping probes multiple systems in parallel, and the runtime  is  therefore  mostly  dependent  on  the
       timeout-setting  and  the  number  of retries. With the default options, xymonping takes approximately 18
       seconds to ping all hosts (tested with an input set of 1500 IP addresses).

SUID-ROOT INSTALLATION REQUIRED

       xymonping needs to be installed with suid-root privileges, since it requires a "raw socket" to  send  and
       receive ICMP Echo (ping) packets.

       xymonping  is  implemented  such  that it immediately drops the root privileges, and only regains them to
       perform two operations: Obtaining the raw socket, and optionally binding it to a specific source address.
       These  operations are performed as root, the rest of the time xymonping runs with normal user privileges.
       Specifically, no user-supplied data or network data is used while running with root privileges. Therefore
       it should be safe to provide xymonping with the necessary suid-root privileges.

OPTIONS

       --retries=N
              Sets  the number of retries for hosts that fail to respond to the initial ping, i.e. the number of
              ping probes sent in addition to the initial probe. The default is --retries=2, to ping  a  host  3
              times before concluding that it is not responding.

       --timeout=N
              Determines  the timeout (in seconds) for ping probes. If a host does not respond within N seconds,
              it is regarded as unavailable, unless  it  responds  to  one  of  the  retries.   The  default  is
              --timeout=5.

       --responses=N
              xymonping  normally  stops  pinging  a  host  after  receiving a single response, and uses that to
              determine the round-trip time. If the first response takes longer to  arrive  -  e.g.  because  of
              additional  network overhead when first determining the route to the target host - it may skew the
              round-trip-time reports. You can then use this option to require N responses, and  xymonping  will
              calculate the round-trip time as the average of all of responsetimes.

       --max-pps=N
              Maximum  number  of packets per second. This limits the number of ICMP packets xymonping will send
              per second, by enforcing a brief delay after each packet is sent. The default setting is to send a
              maximum of 50 packets per second. Note that increasing this may cause flooding of the network, and
              since ICMP packets can be discarded by routers and other network equipment, this can cause erratic
              behaviour with hosts recorded as not responding when they are in fact OK.

       --source=ADDRESS
              Use ADDRESS as the source IP address of the ping packets sent.  On multi-homed systems, allows you
              to select the source IP of the hosts going out, which might be necessary for ping to work.

       --debug
              Enable debug output. This prints out all packets sent and received.

SEE ALSO

       xymon(7), xymonnet(1), fping(1)