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fping is a program which uses the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) echo request to determine if a host is up. fping is different from ping in that you can specify any number of hosts on the command line, or specify a file containing the lists of hosts to ping. Instead of trying one host until it timeouts or replies, fping will send out a ping packet and move on to the next host in a round-robin fashion. If a host replies, it is noted and removed from the list of hosts to check. If a host does not respond within a certain time limit and/or retry limit it will be considered unreachable.
Basically fping is meant to be used in shell scripts and its output is easy to parse. This command can be very useful to when you have to scan whole network for alive or unreachable hosts. In case of usage regular ping command you’ll have to write shell script and parse each hosts icmp replies but fping can do the same in one line:
To scan range of IP addresses from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.9 just run:
sudo fping -s -g 192.168.0.1 192.168.0.9 -r 1
That will output:
192.168.0.1 is alive
192.168.0.7 is alive
192.168.0.2 is unreachable
192.168.0.3 is unreachable
192.168.0.4 is unreachable
192.168.0.5 is unreachable
192.168.0.6 is unreachable
192.168.0.8 is unreachable
192.168.0.9 is unreachable
9 targets
2 alive
7 unreachable
0 unknown addresses
14 timeouts (waiting for response)
16 ICMP Echos sent
2 ICMP Echo Replies received
0 other ICMP received
0.05 ms (min round trip time)
0.44 ms (avg round trip time)
0.84 ms (max round trip time)
2.183 sec (elapsed real time)
In order to scan /24 network (254 hosts) and show only alive hosts the following command can be used:
sudo fping -a -q -g 192.168.0.0/24
Hi Dudu
Please help how to ping list of hosts specified in a file.if possible can u give it in a script.
Thanks
Hi Kalyan,
You can try this:
cat /tmp/ips | xargs -n 1 ping -c 10this will ping ip addresses listed in /tmp/ips with 10 packets each.
P.S.
viper-laptop:~$ cat /tmp/ips64.233.187.99
216.239.47.1
4.2.2.4
from “man fping” -
-f Read list of targets from a file. This option can only be used by the root user. Regular users should pipe in the file via stdin:
% fping
ok…. obviously i need to put
tags in there :0 i'll try again:-f Read list of targets from a file. This option can only be used by the root user. Regu?lar users should pipe in the file via stdin:
% fping
hope that's clearer...
dammit! ok - type “man fping” and look for the “-f Read list of targets from a file….” bit. it’s not showing it all when i paste in in here, dont know how too fix that, sorry.
ok, one last try -
-f Read list of targets from a file. This option can only be used by the root user. Regular users should pipe in the file via stdin:% fpingif that hasn worked, i'm leaving it alone
Thanks pellgarlic!
Yes, here is example of usage fping:
fping < /tmp/ipsThat will ping range of IP listed in /tmp/ips IN PARALLEL, by the way:
viper-laptop:~$ cat /tmp/ips
64.233.187.99
216.239.47.1
4.2.2.4
Hope it helps!
nope - it’s cutting bits out - read the “man” page for the full info
ahh… artiomix - how did you get the “less than” arrow to show up? it kept cutting it out for me
Just cover your text with <code></code> tags
Oh yeah, it works:
sudo fping -f /tmp/ips
4.2.2.4 is alive
64.233.187.99 is alive
216.239.47.1 is alive
cool
i tried the
tags, but it kept cutting out bits anyway - nevermind - you got the important info up there, and that’s what matters.another victory for the www! knowledge is power!
sudo fping -f /tmp/ips
4.2.2.4 is alive
64.233.187.99 is alive
216.239.47.1 is alive
Hi pellgarlic
Thanks for all the above comments,i followed the above with little modification to suit my need and it’s working fine.
cheers
Hi artiomix
Thanks!
Cheers.
Hi Kalyan, you’re more than welcome!
Hi artiomix,pellgarlic
I am using below script my problem is here,i put this script in crontab to run daily 3 times and move the file “stb” to desktop of another system in the network by using ” mv /root/stb /root/livestb.`date +%d%I%M` && scp livestb.* root@192.168.0.20:/root/Desktop” as a script but final output on the desktop is empty file.
#!/bin/sh
#
#Script to ping all the hosts
#
rm /root/livestb.* && echo “File removed successfully” #To remove previously run file
fping /root/stb
echo ” ***completed*** ”
exit 0
Please can u correct me.
thanks in advance.
hi kalyan, what you’re missing is the redirection… you would need to replace “fping /root/stb” with something like this:
“fping -f /file/with/list/of/ips/to/ping > results/of/fping”
(i.e. - you need 2 files -
1 - the list of ip addresses to ping
2 - the output of the fping command)
so, maybe something like this:
fping -f /root/stb > /root/livestb.`date +%d%I%M`
it seems that you may be confusing the file that fping reads from, with a file you want to have the output stored in -
to have fping read from a file, do this:
fping -f /path/to/file
to save the ouput of fping to a file, do this:
fping -f /path/to/file > /path/to/save/to
(the “>” can be used to redirect the terminal output of any command-line command to a file)
Personally, i think it’s better to use
rm -rf /root/livestb.*than
rm /root/livestb.* && echo "File removed successfully"By the way, i recommend you not to make scripts with root powers (uhm, quite dangerous).
Thanks
Hi friends,
Thanx for all your replys.
cheers,
kalyan.
Can you guys help me install fping so that I can run it through Cygwin on a windows desktop.
Thanks