Bug 6304

Summary: ping no longer accepts IP addresses as >32-bit integers
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: jlewis
Component: iputilsAssignee: Crutcher Dunnavant <crutcher>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 6.1   
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2000-05-15 11:56:18 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
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Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description jlewis 1999-10-24 13:59:55 UTC 
As an easy way to do the conversion to see the dotted-quad
IP address of spammer websites posted as
http://225179979697167/, I used to use ping.  i.e.

[jlewis@sloth jlewis]$ ping 225179979697167
PING 225179979697167 (204.179.76.15): 56 data bytes

Ping from Red Hat 5.2 would take the lower 32-bits of the
number, and use it as the IP.  Red Hat 6.0 won't accept
>32-bit numbers.

In Red Hat 6.1, ping gives:

[jlewis@gsvlfl-ns-1 jlewis]$ ping 225179979697167
ping: unknown host 225179979697167

[jlewis@gsvlfl-ns-1 jlewis]$ ping 3434302479
PING 3434302479 (204.179.76.15) from 209.208.0.2 : 56(84)
bytes of data.
Comment 1 Pekka Savola 2000-07-12 16:32:35 UTC 
I could not reproduce this on a Redhat 5.2 system (+all updates) running 2.2.16,
or recompiled on a newer system, so I guess this is an issue with libraries/headers.

Nonetheless, I don't think this kind of broken behaviour should be supported.
This won't work in other newer systems anymore either (e.g. FreeBSD 4.0).