NAME 

sonar - display a sonar scope

SYNOPSIS 

sonar [-ping hosts-or-subnets] [-background color] [-sweep-color color] [-low-color color] [-scope-color color] [-grid-color color] [-text-color color] [-ttl integer] [-font font] [-ping-timeout int] [-team-a-name string] [-team-b-name string] [-team-a-count int] [-team-b-count int] [-no-dns] [-no-times] [-debug]

DESCRIPTION 

The sonar program displays a sonar scope on the computer's screen. This scope polls a sensor as the sweep goes around the scope and displays what it finds as bogies on the screen. The program is designed to support different modes representing different types of sensors. Currently the only implemented sensors are a simulator, and a network ping function that pings hosts and plots the results on the scope.

OPTIONS 

sonar understands the following options:
-background Color
The background Color of the screen not covered by the scope.
-sweep-color Color
The color of the brightest part of the sweep.
-scope-color Color
The color of the circular part of the scope.
-grid-color Color
The color to the grid lines overlaying the scope.
-text-color Color
The color of the text identifying bogies on the scope.
-ttl integer
"Time to live": visible time of a Bogie. Try values between 10 (very short) and 100.
-font font
The font used to display text on the scope. Default "fixed".
-ping-timeout int
The amount of time in milliseconds the program will wait for an answer to a ping.
-ping hosts-or-subnets
The list of things to ping, separated by commas or spaces. Elements of this list may be:
simulation
to run in simulation mode, instead of pinging real hosts (this is the default if the program is not installed setuid);
hostname
to ping the given host;
A.B.C.D
to ping the given IP address;
subnet
to ping the local class C subnet (the nearest 255 addresses);
subnet/NN
to ping a different-sized local subnet: e.g., subnet/28 would ping a 4-bit subnet (the nearest 15 addresses);
A.B.C.D/NN
to ping an arbitrary other subnet: the IP address specifies the base address, and the part after the slash is how wide the subnet is. Typical values are /24 (for 255 addresses) and /28 (for 15 addresses.)
filename
to ping the hosts listed in the given file. This file can be in the format used by /etc/hosts, or it can be any file that has host names as the first element on each line. If you use ssh, try this:

sonar -ping $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts

-no-dns
Do not attempt to resolve IP addresses to hostnames.
-no-times
Do not display ping times beneath the host names.
-team-a-name string
In simulation mode, the name of team A.
-team-b-name string
In simulation mode, the name of team B.
-team-a-count int
In simulation mode, the number of bogies on team A.
-team-b-count int
In simulation mode, the number of bogies on team B.

RESOURCES 

Configuration of the targets to ping is best done by setting X Resources.
background (Color)
See option -background, above; default value is black.
sweepColor (Color)
See option -sweep-color, above; default value is #00ff00.
scopeColor (Color)
See option -scope-color, above; default value is #003300.
gridColor (Color)
See option -grid-color, above; default value is #00aa00.
textColor (Color)
See option -text-color, above; default value is #ffff00.
ttl (integer)
See option -ttl, above; default value is 90 or one sweep.
ping (string)
See option -ping, above. If set to default, it will ping the contents of /etc/hosts if possible, otherwise, will run in simulation-mode.
font (font)
See option -font, above; default value is fixed.
pingTimeout (Integer)
See option -pingtimeout, above; default value is 3000.
teamAName string
See option -team-a-name, above. Default value is F18.
teamBName string
See option -teamBName, above. Default value is MIG.
teamACount int
See option -teamACount, above. Default value is 4.
teamBCount int
See option -teamBCount, above. Default value is 4.

NOTES 

In order to use the ping sensor, this program must be installed as setuid root, so that it can create an ICMP socket. Root privileges are disavowed shortly after startup (just after connecting to the X server and reading the resource database) so this is believed to be a safe thing to do, but it is usually recommended that you have as few setuid programs around as possible, on general principles. 
chown root.root sonar
chmod u+s sonar

In ping-mode, the display is a logarithmic scale, calibrated so that the three rings represent ping times of approximately 2.5, 70 and 2,000 milliseconds respectively.

This means that if any the hosts you are pinging take longer than 2 seconds to respond, they won't show up; and if you are pinging several hosts with very fast response times, they will all appear close to the center of the screen (making their names hard to read.)

SEE ALSO 

X(1), xscreensaver(1), (8)

COPYRIGHT 

Copyright © 1998 by Stephen Martin. <smartin@canada.com> Copyright © 2000-2004 by Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>

Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

AUTHORS 

Stephen Martin <smartin@canada.com>, 3-nov-98.

Thanks to Tom Kelly for suggesting a modular approach to the sensor among other things.

Thomas Bahls <thommy@cs.tu-berlin.de> hacked the "ttl" option, 12-jul-98.

Better subnet support and command-line processing by Jamie Zawinski, 17-Jul-00.