A small flaw in the way that ping behaves. If a user tries to do a "ping -c3 somehost", the ping will run eternally, until the host is brought up on the network and 3 packets comes back. I believe this represents a flaw in design, as admins often use "ping" in scripts to test if a sytems is up or down, then execute some function if it's down. If ping never returns, then the script will hang. Most other Unix systems do NOT do this. They send N number of packets, wait W length of time, then exit. This represents a HUGE problem for shell scripters, as they then have to grope around the process table to find their 'ping' PID, then manually kill the process after some period of time. A real pain in the behind. So...in the meantime, I'll use an HPUX system instead of a RedHat linux system as this represents a very large problem for me. v/r Shane ------- Additional Comments From 11/07/99 18:09 ------- Even though netkit-base*-36.rpm supposedly fixed it, it is broken in 37 again, so this probably also breaks in RH6.1, which uses 37.
supposedly netkit-base*36.rpm fixed this, but 37 broke it again. Since RH6.1 also uses 37, I think this problem exists there as well. This needs fixed immediately (I thought my Big Brother install was broken, but it turns out it was RedHat's ping). ping isn't rocket-science!
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 8724 ***