sonar - display a sonar scope

sonar [-ping hosts-or-subnets] [-background color] [-sweep-color color] [-low-color color] [-scope-color color] [-grid-color color] [-text-color color] [-ttl integer] [-font font] [-ping-timeout int] [-team-a-name string] [-team-b-name string] [-team-a-count int] [-team-b-count int] [-no-dns] [-no-times] [-debug]

The sonar program displays a sonar scope on the computer's screen. This scope polls a sensor as the sweep goes around the scope and displays what it finds as bogies on the screen. The program is designed to support different modes representing different types of sensors. Currently the only implemented sensors are a simulator, and a network ping function that pings hosts and plots the results on the scope.

sonar understands the following options:

-background Color

The background Color of the screen not covered by the scope.

-sweep-color Color

The color of the brightest part of the sweep.

-scope-color Color

The color of the circular part of the scope.

-grid-color Color

The color to the grid lines overlaying the scope.

-text-color Color

The color of the text identifying bogies on the scope.

-ttl integer

"Time to live": visible time of a Bogie. Try values between 10 (very short) and 100.

-font font

The font used to display text on the scope. Default "fixed".

-ping-timeout int

The amount of time in milliseconds the program will wait for an answer to a ping.

-ping hosts-or-subnets

The list of things to ping, separated by commas or spaces. Elements of this list may be:

simulation

to run in simulation mode, instead of pinging real hosts (this is the default if the program is not installed setuid);

hostname

to ping the given host;

A.B.C.D

to ping the given IP address;

subnet

to ping the local class C subnet (the nearest 255 addresses);

subnet/NN

to ping a different-sized local subnet: e.g., subnet/28 would ping a 4-bit subnet (the nearest 15 addresses);

A.B.C.D/NN

to ping an arbitrary other subnet: the IP address specifies the base address, and the part after the slash is how wide the subnet is. Typical values are /24 (for 255 addresses) and /28 (for 15 addresses.)

filename

to ping the hosts listed in the given file. This file can be in the format used by /etc/hosts, or it can be any file that has host names as the first element on each line. If you use ssh, try this:

sonar -ping $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts

-no-dns

Do not attempt to resolve IP addresses to hostnames.

-no-times

Do not display ping times beneath the host names.

-team-a-name string

In simulation mode, the name of team A.

-team-b-name string

In simulation mode, the name of team B.

-team-a-count int

In simulation mode, the number of bogies on team A.

-team-b-count int

In simulation mode, the number of bogies on team B.

Configuration of the targets to ping is best done by setting X Resources.

background (Color)

See option -background, above; default value is black.

sweepColor (Color)

See option -sweep-color, above; default value is #00ff00.

scopeColor (Color)

See option -scope-color, above; default value is #003300.

gridColor (Color)

See option -grid-color, above; default value is #00aa00.

textColor (Color)

See option -text-color, above; default value is #ffff00.

ttl (integer)

See option -ttl, above; default value is 90 or one sweep.

ping (string)

See option -ping, above. If set to default, it will ping the contents of /etc/hosts if possible, otherwise, will run in simulation-mode.

font (font)

See option -font, above; default value is fixed.

pingTimeout (Integer)

See option -pingtimeout, above; default value is 3000.

teamAName string

See option -team-a-name, above. Default value is F18.

teamBName string

See option -teamBName, above. Default value is MIG.

teamACount int

See option -teamACount, above. Default value is 4.

teamBCount int

See option -teamBCount, above. Default value is 4.

In order to use the ping sensor, this program must be installed as setuid root, so that it can create an ICMP socket. Root privileges are disavowed shortly after startup (just after connecting to the X server and reading the resource database) so this is believed to be a safe thing to do, but it is usually recommended that you have as few setuid programs around as possible, on general principles. chown root.root sonar chmod u+s sonar In ping-mode, the display is a logarithmic scale, calibrated so that the three rings represent ping times of approximately 2.5, 70 and 2,000 milliseconds respectively.

This means that if any the hosts you are pinging take longer than 2 seconds to respond, they won't show up; and if you are pinging several hosts with very fast response times, they will all appear close to the center of the screen (making their names hard to read.)

X(1), xscreensaver(1), ping(8)

Copyright © 1998 by Stephen Martin. <smartin@canada.com> Copyright © 2000-2004 by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Stephen Martin <smartin@canada.com>, 3-nov-98.

Thanks to Tom Kelly for suggesting a modular approach to the sensor among other things.

Thomas Bahls <thommy@cs.tu-berlin.de> hacked the "ttl" option, 12-jul-98.

Better subnet support and command-line processing by Jamie Zawinski, 17-Jul-00.