# The Knu Handbook

Bertrand
Leconte
v 0.6.0, June, 14 1999

This documentation was last updated for knu version 0.6.1. Please make any comments and additions to the author.

The Knu Manual

KDE
Knu
Network Utilities
ping
traceroute
mtr
host
nslookup
finger
whois

## Introduction

The KDE network utilities program allows you to make a ping, a traceroute, an host resolution or a finger query without lauching a terminal emulator.

You choose which utility you want to run by selecting the corresponding tab. You give the parameters needed for it and then click on the "`Go!`" button (or hit return). While the command is running, you can stop it by pushing the "`Stop`" button.

## The Ping tab

### What is it?

The `ping(8)` command sends ICMP `ECHO&lowbar;REQUEST` packets to network hosts to check for network reachability. A response from a host (or anything that have an IP address) says that this host is running at least a TCP/IP network stack and indicates that the network route to go to this host is opened. The ping tab allows the execution of the `ping(8)` command.

### Description

Ping uses the ICMP protocol's mandatory `ECHO&lowbar;REQUEST` datagram to elicit an ICMP `ECHO&lowbar;RESPONSE` from a host or gateway. `ECHO&lowbar;REQUEST` datagrams (``pings'') have an IP and ICMP header, followed by a `struct timeval` and then an arbitrary number of pad bytes used to fill out the packet.

### Options

Make host name resolution

  Print addresses numerically rather than symbolically and numerically (this saves a nameserver address-to-name lookup).

When using ping for fault isolation, it should first be run on the local host, to verify that the local network interface is up and running. Then, hosts and gateways further and further away should be ``pinged''. Round-trip times and packet loss statistics are computed. If duplicate packets are received, they are not included in the packet loss calculation, although the round trip time of these packets is used in calculating the minimum/average/maximum round-trip time numbers. When the program is terminated, a brief summary is displayed.

This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and management. Because of the load it can impose on the network, it is unwise to use ping during normal operations or for too long.

## The Traceroute tab

### What is it?

The `traceroute(8)` command prints the route that packets take to network host. The Traceroute tab allows the execution of the `traceroute(8)` command.

### Description

The Internet is a large and complex aggregation of network hardware, connected together by gateways. Tracking the route one's packets follow (or finding the miscreant gateway that's discarding your packets) can be difficult. Traceroute utilizes the IP protocol time to live field and attempts to elicit an ICMP `TIME&lowbar;EXCEEDED` response from each gateway along the path to some host.

### Options

Make host name resolution

  Print hop addresses numerically rather than symbolically and numerically (this saves a nameserver address-to-name lookup for each gateway found on the path).

Maximum number of hops

  Set the max time-to-live (maximum number of hops) used in outgoing probe packets. The default is 30 hops (the same default used for TCP connections).

This program attempts to trace the route an IP packet would follow to some internet host by launching UDP probe packets with a small ttl (time to live) then listening for an ICMP "`time exceeded`" reply from a gateway. We start our probes with a ttl of one and increase by one until we get an ICMP "`port unreachable`" (which means we got to "host") or hit a max (which defaults to 30 hops and can be changed with the Maximum number of hops option). Three probes are sent at each time-to-live setting and a line is printed showing the time-to-live, address of the gateway and round trip time of each probe. If the probe answers come from different gateways, the address of each responding system will be printed. If there is no response within a 3 seconds timeout interval, a "*" is printed for that probe.

We don't want the destination host to process the UDP probe packets so the destination port is set to an unlikely value.

This program is intended for use in network testing, measurement and management. It should be used primarily for manual fault isolation. Because of the load it could impose on the network, it is unwise to use traceroute during normal operations or for too long.

#### Traceroute's authors

Implemented by Van Jacobson from a suggestion by Steve Deering. Debugged by a cast of thousands with particularly cogent suggestions or fixes from C. Philip Wood, Tim Seaver and Ken Adelman.

## The Host resolution tab

### What is it?

The Host resolution tab allows the execution of a host resolution program (`host(1)` or `nslookup(8)`). This host resolution program will asks the Domain Name Server the answer to the question asked.

### Description

This command looks for information about Internet hosts and domain names. It gets this information from a set of interconnected servers that are spread across the world. This set of interconnected servers are called the Domain Name Servers (DNS). The information is stored in the form of resource records belonging to hierarchically organized zones.

By default, the command simply converts between host names and Internet addresses. However, with the Search for options, it can be used to find all of the information about domain names that is maintained by the domain nameserver system. The information printed consists of various fields of the associated resource records that were retrieved.

The host field can be either host names (domain names) or numeric Internet addresses.

A numeric Internet address consists of four decimal numbers separated by dots, e.g. `192.16.199.1`, representing the four bytes of the 32-bit address. The default action is to look up the associated host name.

A host name or domain name consists of component names (labels) separated by dots, e.g. `nikhefh.nikhef.nl`. The default action is to look up all of its Internet addresses.

For single names without a trailing dot, the local domain is automatically tacked on the end. Thus a user in domain `nikhef.nl` can type in `nikhapo`, and it will actually look up `nikhapo.nikhef.nl`. In all other cases, the name is tried unchanged. Single names with trailing dot are considered top-level domain specifications, e.g. `nl.`

For a more precise description of the behaviour of this command, please see the underlying program's man-page `host(1)` or `nslookup(8)`.

### Options

Search for

  This allows you to specify a particular type of resource record information to be looked up. Supported types are listed below.

Server

  This is the name (or the address) of the domain name server to ask.

#### Resource type

The resource type possible are:

`A` &lowbar;&lowbar;&lowbar; the host's Internet address.

`PTR` &lowbar; the host name.

`NS` &lowbar;&lowbar; the name server for the named zone.

`MX` &lowbar;&lowbar; the mail exchanger.

`CNAME` the canonical name for an alias.

`SOA` &lowbar; the domain's ``start-of-authority'' information.

`ANY` &lowbar; all informations available.

##### Host's authors

This program is originally from Rutgers University. It has been rewritten by Eric Wassenaar, NIKHEF, <e07@nikhef.nl>.

##### NsLookup's authors

Andrew Cherenson

## The Finger tab

### What is it?

The Finger tab allows the execution of the `finger(1)` command. The `finger` command displays information about the system users.

The command output will depends on the server which will make the reply.

### Options

Server

  This is the name (or the address) of the finger server to ask.

### History

The finger command appeared in 3.0BSD.

## The mtr tab

### What is it?

The mtr tab allows the execution of the `mtr(1)` command. mtr combines the functionality of the `traceroute` and `ping` programs in a single network diagnostic tool.

### Description

As `mtr` starts, it investigates the network connection between the host `mtr` runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it determines the address of each network hop between the machines, it sends a sequence ICMP ECHO requests (like `ping`) to each one to determine the quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints running statistics about each machine.

### Author

`mtr` was written by Matt Kimball, with contributions by many people. Roger Wolff took over maintenance of `mtr` in October 1998.

## Configuration

You can configure the pathname of the command used by KDE network utilities if you don't want the command found in the `PATH` variable to be used or if the command in not found the the `PATH`. This can be done in the Edit -> Preferences... menu. The GNU/Debian users will put the traceroute's command to `/usr/sbin/traceroute` as normal users don't have this directory in their path.

The same dialog box allows you to specify arguments to the program. For example, on Sun Solaris computers, you can add `-s` as argument for the ping command.

For the host resolution tab, you will have to choose the type of the underlying command used, `host` or `nslookup`.

You can disable a command by editing the configuration file (by hand) and in the corresponding group, just modify to read `enable = 0`.

The finger, whois and host resolution tabs have a server list. These lists can be modified by changing the corresponding `Servers` key in the config file (by hand in this version).

## Epilogue

### Authors

`Bertrand Leconte`

`Kai Fricke` conversion of the documentation to SGML

The documentation comes mainly from the Linux `ping(8)`, `traceroute(8)`, `host(1)` and `nslookup(8)` man pages. For `mtr` the documentation comes from the Web site (http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr).

### Copyright

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.