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3 JohnMcPherson 1 [Here is a screenshot|http://www.wlug.org.nz/archive/images/xtraceroute-screenshot.png?] of xtraceroute in action, showing the rough path taken between my packets in Hamilton, NewZealand to the [BBC]'s website, via Australia and then the USA.
2 ----
3
1 JohnMcPherson 4 !!NAME
5 xtraceroute - graphical (X11) traceroute
6
7 !!SYNOPSIS
8 __xtraceroute__ ''[[options] [[hostname]''
9
10
11 !!DESCRIPTION
2 StuartYeates 12 This manual page briefly documents the __xtraceroute__ , command. 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.
1 JohnMcPherson 13
14 __xtraceroute__ is a graphical version of the traceroute program, which traces the route your IP packets travel to their destination.
15
16 On the display:
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18 * Green dots have good location information that came from LOC fields in the DNS, which is the best data out there.
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20 * Orange ones has been guessed from the sites' suffix.
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22 * 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.
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24 * Red ones are completely unknown.
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26 * You can select dots by clicking on them both on the globe and in the list.
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28 * 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.
29
30
31
32 !!ARGUMENTS
2 StuartYeates 33 hostname is the name (or [IP] address) of the host you are interested in.
1 JohnMcPherson 34
35 !!OPTIONS
36 The program follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-').
37 ;__- version__ : Show version number
38 ;__-h, - help__ : Display a brief help text.
39 ;__-T, - texture texture-name__ : Use a custom texture (map). It can be any kind of file that gdk_pixbuf can load (which is most reasonable formats). There are a few really good textures on http://www.radcyberzine.com/xglobe/ (Meant for use with Xglobe, but they'll work fine here as well.)
40 ;__-N, - ntexture texture-name__ : Use a custom texture (map) for the part of the earth that's not lit by the sun.
41 ;__- night, - no-night__ : Do/Don't use the night texture where appropriate. The default is to do an all-day earth.
42 ;__- LOD number__ : Set the level-of-detail for the sphere. (The default is 3, 0-4 are realistic values.)
43 ;__- stdin, -__ : Makes the program read data from stdin instead of calling traceroute(8) (Mainly useful for debugging)
44
45 !!CAVEATS
46 __xtraceroute __ tries hard to guess the location of machines, but it is just software, it doesn't know everything, and it makes mistakes.
47
2 StuartYeates 48 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.
1 JohnMcPherson 49
2 StuartYeates 50 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.
1 JohnMcPherson 51
52 !!FILES
53
54 ;''/usr/share/xtraceroute/earth.png'' : Default texture for the earth.
55 ;''/usr/share/xtraceroute/night.png'' : Default night-time texture for the earth.
56 ;''/usr/share/xtraceroute/xtraceroute-resolve-location.sh'' : This is a script that xtraceroute uses to get data on sites in a nice asynchronous way. It's not very interesting by itself.
57 ;''/usr/share/xtraceroute/site_hosts.cache'' : System-wide hosts file (optional)
58 ;''/usr/share/xtraceroute/site_networks.cache'' : System-wide networks file (optional)
59
60 The two files above are filled in by hand, following the model of ''/usr/lib/xtraceroute '' *.cache files.
61 ;''$HOME/.xt/user_hosts.cache '' : Your personal hosts file
62 ;''$HOME/.xt/user_networks.cache '' : Your personal networks file
63 ;''$HOME/.xt/user_generic.cache '' : Your personal base of regular expressions
64
65 These three personal files are typically filled in via the __Database __ menu.
66
67
68 !!LOC data
69 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 location) RR. It's not exactly widely used, but you see it every now and then. Hopefully this program can help change that.
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2 StuartYeates 71 How to get LOC data for your site into the [DNS]:
1 JohnMcPherson 72
73 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.mapblast.com. Sysadmins are busy people.
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75 When xtraceroute tries to resolve a hostname it will try the proper name first, and then higher domains. For example if our hostname is "apa.bepa.cepa.com", it will try that, "bepa.cepa.com" and "cepa.com". (But not just "com")
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2 StuartYeates 77 This means that if you're a big site and it's hard to persuade the admins to add individual [LOC] entries for all machines, you can try getting them to add one or two for the whole domain.
1 JohnMcPherson 78
79
80
81 !!SEE ALSO
82 traceroute(8)
83
84 More information on xtraceroute is in /usr/share/doc/xt.
85
86 !!AUTHOR
2 StuartYeates 87 This manual page was written by Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@debian.org>, for the [Debian] [GNU]/[Linux] system (but may be used by others), and then later modified by Ola Lundqvist <opal@debian.org>. Xtraceroute was written by Björn Augustsson <d3august@dtek.chalmers.se>.
1 JohnMcPherson 88
89 !!BUGS
90 Please send bug reports to Björn Augustsson <d3august@dtek.chalmers.se>.
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