XTRACEROUTE(E)                                     XTRACEROUTE(E)



NAME
       xtraceroute - graphical (X11) traceroute

SYNOPSIS
       xtraceroute [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.

       -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(e) (Mainly useful for debugging)

CAVEATS
       xtraceroute  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/share/xtraceroute/earth.png
              Default texture for the earth.

       /usr/share/xtraceroute/site_hosts.cache
              System-wide hosts file (optional)

       /usr/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

       $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 ALSO
       traceroute(e)

       More information on xtraceroute  is  in  /usr/doc/xtracer-
       oute.

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>.




                                                   XTRACEROUTE(E)