Package: iputils-arping
Version: 3:20071127-1
Severity: normal
Tags: patch
Quite coincidentally, I got to read the "Description" field of the
iputils-arping
package. I don't know why this hasn't been spotted earlier - but there is not
a single true statement, neither in the first line nor in the rest.
The arping does not send ICMP echo requests, it sends ARP requests. It does
not send them to an ARP address (which is wrong term anyway, but I assume it
means a MAC address) - it sends the requests to an IP address. And it is not
useful when you don't know the IP address...
I have attached a patch with proposed change of the entry. The man(8) arping is
quite fine.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_DK.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_DK.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages iputils-arping depends on:
ii libc6 2.7-12 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
iputils-arping recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
diff -c iputils-20071127/debian/control\~ iputils-20071127/debian/control
*** iputils-20071127/debian/control~ 2008-07-07 16:01:15.000000000 +0200
--- iputils-20071127/debian/control 2008-07-07 16:09:58.000000000 +0200
***************
*** 40,50 ****
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}
Conflicts: suidmanager (<< 0.50), arping, iputils-ping (<<20001110-6)
Replaces: netbase (<< 4.00)
! Description: Tool to send ICMP echo requests to an ARP address
! The arping command acts like the standard ping command except it pings
! a machine by its ARP address instead of its IP address. It is typically
! used to locate a machine if its hardware address is known but its IP
! address is unknown
Package: netkit-ping
Architecture: any
--- 40,55 ----
Depends: ${shlibs:Depends}
Conflicts: suidmanager (<< 0.50), arping, iputils-ping (<<20001110-6)
Replaces: netbase (<< 4.00)
! Description: Tool to send ARP Requests for an IP address
! The standard ping command sends ICMP Echo Requests to an IP address.
! To do that on an Ethernet-type link, however, the sending node needs
! to know the MAC address of the destination, so when standard ping
! fails, you don't really know whether it is the address resolution or
! the Echo Request that fails.
! .
! The arping command only does the ARP part, so it can be useful after
! a failed ping in figuring out whether it is the resolution or the
! ICMP Echo that fails. It can do other useful things, too.
Package: netkit-ping
Architecture: any
