Chris_McNeil@MACSMTP.CSD.UNB.CA (Chris McNeil) (11/28/90)
Regrading my initial request for info on how to write a ping command for the Mac. Interpoll and others are not what I want. I need a real ping command so that I can sit at my Mac and ping to unix hosts, my mainfram etc. I know my Mac will respond to pings when I am using MacTcp but I want to be able to initiate pings Chris McNeil
conrad@harvarda.harvard.edu (Conrad Nobili) (12/01/90)
In article <Added.cbIwTLK00UkTM_UU8V@andrew.cmu.edu> Chris_McNeil@MACSMTP.CSD.UNB.CA (Chris McNeil) writes: > Mac. Interpoll and others are not what I want. I need a real ping command so > that I can sit at my Mac and ping to unix hosts, my mainfram etc. I know my Mac > will respond to pings when I am using MacTcp but I want to be able to initiate > pings > > Chris McNeil Here's one solution to your problem. It is by no means ideal, but it works. Actually, I was a bit surprised that it worked as well and flexibly as it did. I had come upon this a few weeks ago and tried it for a few days until our new UNIX machine went away. There is definitely a need to be able to execute arbitrary UNIX commands from the machine one is working on (in this case, and hopefully most of the time, a Mac) without having to go to the bother of firing up a terminal emulator or telnet session and logging in to a real UNIX machine. There is usually too much overhead involved when one needs simply to test for the existence or status of a machine with ping or of a user with finger, etc..... The way this thing works is you fire up the superserver on the UNIX machine (oops, I don't remember if you need privileges to do this, and I guess some people might not even have any access to one...) and then any user can publish any service to the net. One simply uses the client desk accessory to connect to the appropriate superserver, chooses a service published from it, and observes the results. Read the description below. Better yet, just grab it and try it out. It's pretty trivial to get going. In the three days I used it I found it to be very nice to be able to ping, finger, who, and other things.... Here's the info I had gotten from comp.archives (I think that's where)... ********** From: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson) Newsgroups: comp.archives Subject: [comp.sys.mac...] Macintosh Client to Unix programs available from ssyx Date: 23 Jun 90 05:05:30 GMT Followup-To: comp.sys.mac Organization: University of Michigan, Department of Mathematics X-Original-Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac,comp.sys.mac.programmer Archive-name: mac-client-da/20-Jun-90 Original-posting-by: sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu (Greg Anderson) Original-subject: Macintosh Client to Unix programs available from ssyx Archive-site: ssyx.ucsc.edu [128.114.133.1] Archive-directory: pub/mac/client Reposted-by: emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- README: This is the "README" file from the directory '/usr/ftp/pub/mac/client' on ssyx.ucsc.edu (128.114.133.1). The Macintosh Client DA may be ftp'd from this directory / site. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Macintosh Client DA The Macintosh Client DA is a desk accessory that communicates with a superserver running on some Unix Machine. Macintosh users who have Steven Grimm's unix-side client/server software (also available for anonymous ftp from ssyx) and MacTCP (available from APDA) may use this DA to remotely execute unix programs from their Macintosh. The Macintosh DA is bundled in the file "Client DA.sit.hqx". Use stuffit! to unbinhex and unstuff the suitcase file, then use font/DA mover to install the DA in your system. Source code for the DA is also available from ssyx in the file "Client Source.sit.hqx". The Client DA and its source code is (c) 1990 U.C. Regents. Permission is granted to use, modify and distribute this code freely, provided no profit is made by its distribution. Programs that can be used The client/server software works similarly to rsh, but requires no password to use. Because there is no password protection, the only programs that may be used are those that are explicitly offered as services on the Unix machine running the superserver. Any user who has access to a Unix machine may offer a program as a service. When a client invokes a service, the program runs using the permissions of the user who offered the service. Any program that takes input from stdin and sends its output to stdout my be offered as a client/server service. Difference between Client DA and Telnet Anything that can be done with the Client DA can also be done by a user who has telnet'ed into the same Unix machine with NCSA telnet. There are, however, some advantages to using the client DA: 1.The DA does not take up as much overhead as NCSA telnet does in a Multifinder partition. Also, the DA may be used when Multifinder is not active. 2.The client DA is available to users who do not have accounts on the Unix machine, and it is not necessary to go through the login process to use the DA. 3.The DA allows the user to select a unix program by scrolling through a list of available services using the standard Macintosh point-and-click interface. Because the Client DA never logs the user into the Unix machine and never asks the user for a password, it cannot be used for opperations requiring security (e.g. ftp, mail & c.). The Client DA is much easier to use than Unix, however, and has proven to be a useful interface to the many large databases stored on unix hosts at the University of California at Santa Cruz. KNOWN BUGS: The Desk Accessory cannot handle output > 32K. <Undo> is not implemented. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Send comments and suggestions to: Greg Anderson sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu ...!ucbvax!ucscc!ssyx!sirkm Social Sciences Computing 29 Kerr Hall The University of California at Santa Cruz Santa Cruz, California 95064 (408) 459-2658 NOTE:Greg Anderson left the University of California on 20 June 1990. The above mail path may or may not have a .forward to his current address. ___\ /___ Greg Anderson ___\ /___ \ \ / / Social Sciences Computing \ \ / / \ /\/\ / University of California, Santa Cruz \ /\/\ / \/ \/ sirkm@ssyx.ucsc.edu \/ \/ ********** I hope this has been useful to someone. I would have replied by e-mail, but I thought that others might not have known about this and might find it to be of some utility. I apologize if this comes out looking a bit funny. I am using a netnews reader Hypercard stack to read mail these days and am having some problems with it and Hypercard 2.0 and haven't posted anything from it before. I have very little confidence that my lines are going to fit on your screens. I will post some other questions shortly.... --Conrad Nobili (my sig bit the dust earlier, so...) Harvard University Office for Information Technology Technical and User Services Internet: conrad@harvarda.harvard.edu BITNET: CONRAD AT HARVARDA