sonar(6)

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 on most systems, this program must be installed as setuid root, so that it can create an ICMP RAW 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
It is not necessary to make it setuid on MacOS systems, because on those systems, unprivileged programs can ping by using ICMP DGRAM sockets instead of ICMP RAW. 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), ping(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.