PING.EXE Mon 12-07-1992

By Chris Hapgood

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PING is not public domain software. It is MY software. You can use it,
but don't modify it or distribute it without this file. Thank you.
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PING allows a Netware user to determine if a given "server" is operating
by attempting to open a diagnostic socket on that server.

The syntax for PING is

PING |

For example, to ping the server FS1, type:

PING FS1

If the server is alive, PING will respond

[00000004:080014571176] FS1 is alive.

and exit with an error level of 0. Note that the stuff in brackets is the
server's full internetwork address.

PING works by querying the "Preferred Server" for the address of the named
server. If the preferred server doesn't recognize the user-supplied name,
PING will respond:

Can't resolve hostID name.

and exit with an error level 9. This could indicate that you typed the
name incorrectly, that the server has crashed, or that the server has
been down for so long that its routing entry is no longer in the
preferred server's table.

Once PING has the address of the server, it attempts to open a diagnostic
socket on that server. Most advertising server's (including Novell's
Advertising Print Servers, Novell's File Servers, XTreeNet nodes, NCP Comm
servers, many NLMs, etc) will perform this function. The only exceptions
I have found are Intel NetPorts and InterConnection's Netware for VMS.
If the server does not respond to the request to open a socket, PING says

[00000017:AA0004000304] VAX2: No connection established.

and exits with an error level of 9. A couple of other error messages
are possible, mostly because of problems at the preferred server
(bindery locked, out of memory, etc.). These problems cause PING to
exit with an error level of 9 as well.

Note that PING can use wildcards in the name of the server. Try

PING * to get an interesting display (especially on a large
internetwork).

The syntax of ping allows you to specify an address instead of a name
for those instances when you want to ping a machine that does not
advertise its address. For example:

PING 00000023:00001b3b73d6

Note that the leading zeros and the colon are mandatory. If you use
an address instead of a name as the parameter to PING, wildcards are not
allowed.

If you have any questions, I can be reached on Internet at
cch6t%lonely%[email protected].