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/usr/sbin/ping host [timeout]
/usr/sbin/ping -s [-l | -U] [-abdDLnrRv] [-A addr_family] [-c traffic_class] [-g gateway [-g gateway...]] [-N next_hop_router] [-F flow_label] [-I interval] [-i interface] [-P tos] [-p port] [-t ttl] host [data_size] [npackets]
The utility ping utilizes the ICMP (ICMP6 in IPv6) protocol's ECHO_REQUEST datagram to elicit an ICMP (ICMP6) ECHO_RESPONSE from the specified host or network gateway. If host responds, ping will print:
host is alive
on the standard output and exit. Otherwise, after timeout seconds, it will write:
no answer from host
The default value of timeout is 20 seconds.
When you specify the s flag, sends one datagram per second (adjust with -I) and prints one line of output for every ECHO_RESPONSE that it receives. ping produces no output if there is no response. In this second form, ping computes round trip times and packet loss statistics; it displays a summary of this information upon termination or timeout. The default data_size is 56 bytes, or you can specify a size with the data_size command-line argument. If you specify the optional npackets, ping sends ping requests until it either sends npackets requests or receives npackets replies.
When using ping for fault isolation, first ping the local host to verify that the local network interface is running.
The following options are supported: -A addr_family
Specify the address family of the target host. addr_family can be either inet or inet6. Address family determines which protocol to use. For an argument of inet, IPv4 is used. For inet6, IPv6 is used. By default, if the name of a host is provided, not the literal IP address, and a valid IPv6 address exists in the name service database, ping will use this address. Otherwise, if the name service database contains an IPv4 address, it will try the IPv4 address. Specify the address family inet or inet6 to override the default behavior. If the argument specified is inet, ping will use the IPv4 address associated with the host name. If none exists, ping will state that the host is unknown and exit. It does not try to determine if an IPv6 address exists in the name service database. If the specified argument is inet6, ping uses the IPv6 address that is associated with the host name. If none exists, ping states that the host is unknown and exits.
Don't allow probe packets to be fragmented. If the packet size exceeds the MTU of a gateway it passes through, the gateway will reject it.
Specify the flow label of probe packets. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 1048575. This option is valid only on IPv6.
Turn on the statistics mode and specify the interval between successive transmissions. The default is one second. See the discussion of the -s option. The minimum interval is 0.01 seconds. It is an error to specify a smaller interval.
Turn off loopback of multicast packets. Normally, members are in the host group on the outgoing interface, a copy of the multicast packets will be delivered to the local machine.
Specify a next-hop router so that the probe packet goes through the specified router along its path to the target host. This option essentially bypasses the system routing table and leaves the probe packet header unmodified. Only one next-hop router can be specified.
Set the type of service (tos) in probe packets to the specified value. The default is zero. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 255. Gateways also in the path can route the probe packet differently, depending upon the value of tos that is set in the probe packet. This option is valid only on IPv4.
Record route. Sets the IPv4 record route option, which stores the route of the packet inside the IPv4 header. The contents of the record route are only printed if the -v and -s options are given. They are only set on return packets if the target host preserves the record route option across echos, or the -l option is given. This option is valid only on IPv4.
Send UDP packets instead of ICMP (ICMP6) packets. ping sends UDP packets to consecutive ports expecting to receive back ICMP (ICMP6) PORT_UNREACHABLE from the target host.
ping all addresses, both IPv4 and IPv6, of the multihomed destination. The output appears as if ping has been run once for each IP address of the destination. If this option is used together with -A, ping probes only the addresses that are of the specified address family. When used with the -s option and npackets is not specified, ping continuously probes the destination addresses in a round robin fashion. If npackets is specified, ping sends npackets number of probes to each IP address of the destination and then exits.
Bypass the global IPsec policy and send and receive packets in the clear for this connection only. This option can be used to troubleshoot network connectivity independent of IPsec. Because this option bypasses system-wide policy for this connection, it can only be used by superuser or a user granted the sys_net_config privilege.
Specify the traffic class of probe packets. The value must be an integer in the range from 0 to 255. Gateways along the path can route the probe packet differently, depending upon the value of traffic_class set in the probe packet. This option is valid only on IPv6.
Set the SO_DEBUG socket option.
Specify a loose source route gateway so that the probe packet goes through the specified host along the path to the target host. The maximum number of gateways is 8 for IPv4 and 127 for IPv6. Note that some factors such as the link MTU can further limit the number of gateways for IPv6.
Specify the outgoing interface address to use for multicast packets for IPv4 and both multicast and unicast packets for IPv6. The default interface address for multicast packets is determined from the (unicast) routing tables. interface_address can be a literal IP address, for example, 10.123.100.99, or an interface name, for example, eri0, or an interface index, for example 2.
Use to send the probe packet to the given host and back again using loose source routing. Usually specified with the -R option. If any gateways are specified using -g, they are visited twice, both to and from the destination. This option is ignored if the -U option is used.
Show network addresses as numbers. ping normally does a reverse name lookup on the IP addresses it extracts from the packets received. The -n option blocks the reverse lookup, so ping prints IP addresses instead of host names.
Set the base UDP port number used in probes. This option is used with the -U option. The default base port number is 33434. The ping utility starts setting the destination port number of UDP packets to this base and increments it by one at each probe.
Bypass the normal routing tables and send directly to a host on an attached network. If the host is not on a directly attached network, an error is returned. This option can be used to ping a local host through an interface that has been dropped by the router daemon. See in.routed(1M).
Send one datagram per second and collect statistics.
Specify the IPv4 time to live, or IPv6 hop limit, for unicast and multicast packets. The default time to live (hop limit) for unicast packets can be set with the ndd module, /dev/icmp, using the icmp_ipv4_ttl variable for IPv4 and the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit variable for IPv6. The default time to live (hop limit) for multicast is one hop. See EXAMPLES. For further information, seendd(1M).
Verbose output. List any ICMP (ICMP6) packets, other than replies from the target host.
The network host
Example 1 Using ping With IPv6
This example shows ping sending probe packets to all the IPv6 addresses of the host xyz, one at a time. It sends an ICMP6 ECHO_REQUEST every second until the user interrupts it.
istanbul% ping -s -A inet6 -a xyz PING xyz: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=0. time=0.479 ms 64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=1. time=0.843 ms 64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=2. time=0.516 ms 64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=3. time=4.943 ms 64 bytes from xyz (4::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=4. time=0.485 ms 64 bytes from xyz (fec0::114:a00:20ff:ab3d:83ed): icmp_seq=5. time=2.201 ms ^C ----xyz PING Statistics---- 6 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip (ms) min/avg/stddev = 0.479/1.583/4.943/1.823
Example 2 Using ndd to Set the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit
This example shows the ndd module, /dev/icmp, used to set the icmp_ipv6_hoplimit.
# ndd -set /dev/icmp icmp_ipv6_hoplimit 100
The following exit values are returned: 0
Successful operation; the machine is alive.
An error has occurred. Either a malformed argument has been specified, or the machine was not alive.
ifconfig(1M), in.routed(1M), ndd(1M), netstat(1M), rpcinfo(1M), traceroute(1M), attributes(5), icmp(7P), icmp6(7P)
When the -n flag is not specified, ping tries to lookup the name corresponding to the IP address that it received via name services. If name services are unavailable, it may take time before the system properly times out the name service lookups. As a result, it may appear that no ICMP replies are being received when they in fact are. This diagnostic indicates that this has occurred and indicates that there are valid responses and that using the -n flag will stop this from occurring.
By default, the system attempts to use the SO_TIMESTAMP socket option to allow for more accurate time stamps that reflect when the ICMP echo replies were received by the system as opposed to when they were received by the ping command. These differences may occur because an operator stopped the process or because ping was blocked up behind a name service look up. When this diagnostic is emitted, the ping command will continue to function, but it will be doing the time stamping itself, which may cause the timing intervals reported to be longer than they actually are.