Re: Where is the trcroute utility?

Peter wrote:

> I could not find the trcroute utility.
> It is not in oracle_home\ora92\bin

It is a standard TCP protocol stack command. Together with commands like ping, route, ipconfig (not on all platforms) and so on.

On Unix, the command is called traceroute and you should find it in /usr/sbin. If not, run a 'whereis traceroute'.

On Windows, it is called tracert.exe (respecting the old DOS 8 char filename standard). It should be in \WinNT\System32. If not, run a 'dir/s/b tracert.exe'.

BTW, you can also use the ping command to run traceroutes. That's to say with a properly implememted ping command (like on Linux and Windows).

A traceroute is down by causing ICMP packets to die on their way to the destination. Maybe not politically correct, but you get a funeral notice from the machine where it died at.

Each ICMP packet as a TTL (time-to-live) number. TTL in the packet, gets decremented by each machince that handles the packet. TTL reaches zero, that machine tells you (instead of passing the packet to the next hop).

So, to do a traceroute using ping, you ping the host starting with a TTL of 1 and then incrementing it until you reach that host. Each machine along the line will thus respond,e.g.
# ping -t 1 some-machine.somehere
.. get the 1st machine in the route ..
# ping -t 2some-machine.somehere
.. get the 2nd machine in the route ..
.. etc.

(On Windows, use the -i switch and not the -t switch).

BTW, nowhere does it say that a DBA or Oracle developer should not know his pings from his traceroutes. ;-)

Next lesson. How to set up an infinite loop using the route command. :-)

--
Billy