XTRACEROUTE(1)XTRACEROUTE(1)NAMExtraceroute - graphical (X11) traceroute
SYNOPSISxtraceroute [options] [hostname]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page briefly documents the xtraceroute, com
mand. This manual page was originally written for the
Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program
does not have a manual page. Since then the author has
gotten his act together and keeps it up to date.
xtraceroute is a graphical version of the traceroute pro
gram, which traces the route your IP packets travel to
their destination.
On the display:
* Green dots have good location information that came from
LOC fields in the DNS, which is the best data out there.
* Orange ones has been guessed from the sites' suffix.
* Yellow ones got resolved via a database of city names
and "known" routers. That data is old and inaccurate and
it's not getting any younger.
* Red ones are completely unknown.
* You can select dots by clicking on them both on the
globe and in the list.
* Pressing and holding the left mouse button and moving
the mouse will rotate the globe. Using the middle mouse
button will move it, and the right mouse button will zoom
it (only vertical movement counts). You can generally get
the view you want this way.
ARGUMENTS
hostname is the name (or IP address) of the host you are
interested in.
OPTIONS
The program follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with
long options starting with two dashes (`-').
--version
Show version number
-h, --help
Display a brief help text.
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XTRACEROUTE(1)XTRACEROUTE(1)-T, --texture texture-name
Use a custom texture (map). It can be any kind of
file that gdk_pixbuf can load (which is most rea
sonable formats). There are a few really good tex
tures on http://www.radcyberzine.com/xglobe/ (Meant
for use with Xglobe, but they'll work fine here as
well.)
--LOD number
Set the level-of-detail for the sphere. (The
default is 3, 0-4 are realistic values.)
--stdin, -
Makes the program read data from stdin instead of
calling traceroute(8) (Mainly useful for debugging)
CAVEATSxtraceroute tries hard to guess the location of machines,
but it is just software, it doesn't know everything, and
it makes mistakes.
The yellow dots has been guessed by looking at the top
level domain (TLD) of the hostname. This works fairly well
for most countries, but there's a few exceptions where
some small countries (like Niue (.nu) and Tuvalu (.tv))
will let anyone register domains in their space for a fee.
I don't care, If it says .nu and it hasn't got a LOC
record, it'll get plotted in Niue. Also, very few US
sites actually use the .us TLD.
If it finds a very high-latency link, it will assume it it
a satellite hop and plot it accordingly. If you have some
other kind of slow link, like PPP over something slow or a
really busy router, it might show up as a satellite hop as
well.
FILES
/usr/freeware/share/xtraceroute/earth.png
Default texture for the earth.
/usr/freeware/share/xtraceroute/site_hosts.cache
System-wide hosts file (optional)
/usr/freeware/share/xtraceroute/site_networks.cache
System-wide networks file (optional)
The two files above are filled in by hand, following the
model of /usr/lib/xtraceroute *.cache files.
$HOME/.xt/user_hosts.cache
Your personal hosts file
$HOME/.xt/user_networks.cache
Your personal networks file
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XTRACEROUTE(1)XTRACEROUTE(1)
$HOME/.xt/user_generic.cache
Your personal base of regular expressions
These three personal files are typically filled in via the
Database menu.
LOC data
The Correct Way to tell the geographical location of a
host on the internet is to ask the DNS. The way to do that
is described in RFC1876, which defines the LOC (for loca
tion) RR. It's not exactly widely used, but you see it
every now and then. Hopefully this program can help change
that.
How to get LOC data for your site into the DNS:
Ask your local sysadmin that maintain your nameserver to
read the RFC. It's a fairly easy read as RFCs go, but it
might help if you find out the location of your site in
advance using, say, a GPS or a site like http://www.map
blast.com. Sysadmins are busy people.
When xtraceroute tries to resolve a hostname it will try
the proper name first, and then higher domains. For exam
ple if our hostname is "apa.bepa.cepa.com", it will try
that, "bepa.cepa.com" and "cepa.com". (But not just
"com")
This means that if you're a big site and it's hard to per
suade the admins to add individual LOC entries for all
machines, you can try getting them to add one or two for
the whole domain.
SEE ALSOtraceroute(8)
More information on xtraceroute is in /usr/free
ware/doc/xtraceroute.
AUTHOR
This manual page was written by Stephane Bortzmeyer
<bortzmeyer@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system
(but may be used by others). Xtraceroute was written by
Bjrn Augustsson <d3august@dtek.chalmers.se>.
BUGS
Please send bug reports to Bjrn Augustsson
<d3august@dtek.chalmers.se>.
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