All,
I am sponsoring this case for Ghee Teo of the JDS team
in Ireland. The project directory contains the attached
proposal and man page for gnome-nettool. I have set the
timer for Monday, August 25th, 2008.
This project proposes to integrate gnome-nettool into a
Minor release of Solaris (i.e., Nevada/Open Solaris).
This project provides a GTK+ GUI front end to networking
tools such as ping, netstat, traceroute, dig, finger
and whois. The interface is being declared as Volatile.
Thanks,
John
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1. Introduction
1.1. Project/Component Working Name:
gnome-nettool
1.2. Name of Document Author/Supplier:
Author: Ghee Teo (ghee.teo at sun.com)
1.3. Date of This Document:
12/08/2008
1.4. Name of Major Document Customer(s)/Consumer(s):
1.4.1. The PAC or CPT you expect to review your project:
Solaris PAC
1.4.2. The ARC(s) you expect to review your project:
LSARC
1.4.3. The Director/VP who is "Sponsoring" this project:
Robert O'Dea
1.4.4. The name of your business unit:
Software - OPG
1.5. Email Aliases:
1.5.1. Responsible Manager: leo.binchy at sun.com
1.5.2. Responsible Engineer: ghee.teo at sun.com
1.5.3. Interest List: jds-dev at sun.com
2. Project Summary
2.1. Project Description:
gnome-nettool provides a GTK+ GUI to a set of networking command line tools
including ping(1M), netstat(1M), traceroute(1M), dig(1M), finger(1), whois(1),
port scan and and showing network device information. The benefit of this tool
is to provide a collection of network client commands in a single place
through an easy to use GUI.
3. Business Summary
gnome-nettool has been adopted by a number of popular distributions including
ubuntu and debian. It is something OpenSolaris can have on the desktop to
improve its appeal in the network tools.
4. Technical Description:
4.1. Details:
gnome-nettool is a GUI wrapper around a number of popular network command
line program. It was first developed as gnome-network module [1] also
provided GUI for remote ssh access. However, this is now removed from
gnome-nettool and making it a simple network tool set GUI.
gnome-nettool provides 8 tabs each performing a set of network related
functions. They are presented in the following order:
Tab 1: Devices - this displays all the network interface devices on the
machine including loopback interface. For each interface,
the IP information, Interface details and data statistics
that the interface holds are shown.
Tab 2: Ping - User can enter a network address by name or numeric form
before clicking on the Ping button. Data is displayed on the
same tab.
Tab 3: Netstat - it uses netstat to display (1) Routing Table information,
(2) Active Network Services, (3) Multicast Information.
Tab 4: Traceroute - User specifies a network address and the traceout output
is shown in a table.
Tab 5: Port Scan - User specifies a network address, and all its opened ports
are shown.
Tab 6: Lookup - User specifies a network address and also specifies the
type of information required. Each of these will be looked
up and displayed in a table.
Tab 7: Finger - User specifies a user name and a network address,
information about the user is 'fingered'.
Tab 8: Whois - User specifies a domain address and click on Whois button,
the domain information is retrieved and displayed.
4.2. Interfaces:
Exported Interfaces
Interface Classification Comments
--------------- --------------- -----------------------
/usr/bin/gnome-nettool Volatile the main program
gnome-nettool.desktop Volatile dot desktop file
SUNWgnome-nettool Uncommitted package name
Imported Interfaces
Interface Classification Comments
--------- -------------- --------
ping Stable PSARC1997/244
netstat Stable PSARC1997/312,
PSARC2001/355
traceroute Stable PSARC/1997/355/
dig External PSARC/2001/586 (NOTE 2)
finger Standard RFC 1288 (also
PSARC/1996/246)
whois Stable RFC954
NOTE: While these classification of these commands are stable and
committed. gnome-nettool uses its text output whose stability is defined.
However, given that these commands have been around for so long and their
output would be relatively stable.
NOTE 2: The ARC case for dig(1M) PSARC/2001/586 has planned to move its
stablility from External to Evolving in its second release, but it did
not happen. However, the version of dig does get updated by the BIND
project, PSARC/2004/363, PSARC/2005/553.
4.3. Doc Impact:
Man page is needed.
4.4. Packaging & Delivery:
SUNWgnome-nettool - the package for gnome-nettool
4.5. Dependencies:
In providing the network device information, gnome-nettool uses a
standard API called, getifaddrs() which is a well known API implemented
on BSD and also Linux. However, this function is not available in
Solaris networking library.
James Carlson has kindly donated a copy of this code that he has pre-
viously worked on the WIDE project. This project essentially absorbed
the code as a point patch for now since this consists of 2 files with
265 lines of code including comments. RFE 6731945 has been logged
against solaris/library/network-other. The plan is that when that RFE
is integrated this project can remove the patch.
This approach is taken in order to fit into the release schedule of
OpenSolaris 2008.11.
4.6. L10N Impact:
The Desktop team is working with the G11N to evaluate and providing
I18N/L10N support
4.7 Security Impact:
None.
5. Reference Documents:
[1] http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-network
This is the only official website for gnome-nettool though the
information contained here referred to gnome-network which is the
previous incarnation of gnome-nettool.
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NAME gnome-nettool(1)
gnome-nettool - Graphical front end to network clients
SYNOPSIS
gnome-nettool [-i DEVICE | --info=DEVICE] [-p HOST | --ping=HOST]
[ -n COMMAND | --netstat=COMMAND] [-t HOST | --traceroute=HOST]
[-s HOST | --port-scan=HOST] [-l HOST | --lookup=HOST]
[-f USER | --finger=USER] [-w DOMAIN | --whois=DOMAIN]
[--display=DISPLAY]
DESCRIPTION
The gnome-nettool application is a GTK+ front end for a number of network
client command line applications including ping(1M), netstat(1M),
traceroute(1M), dig(1M), finger(1), whois(1) and also showing the network
interface devices and scanning for services. Each of these functions is
grouped into a tab on its own. When gnome-nettool is invoked without any
option, it displays its first tab which is showing the machine's network
devices. However, it can also be invoked with any one of the option above.
These option can only be invoked one at a time, except the --display option.
-i DEVICE | --info=DEVICE launch gnome-nettool showing the device tab
with the DEVICE specified.
-p HOST | --ping=HOST launch gnome-nettool showing the ping tab and
pinging the HOST.
-n COMMAND | --netstat=COMMAND launch gnome-nettool in the netstat tab
with the COMMAND option, the valid values for
COMMAND are {route, active, multicast}.
-t HOST | --traceroute=HOST launch gnome-nettool in the traceroute tab
showing the routes.
-s HOST | --port-scan=HOST launch gnome-nettool in the Port Scan tab and
showing the open port for HOST.
-l HOST | --lookup=HOST launch gnome-nettool in the Lookup tab and
showing the HOST information.
-f USER | --finger=USER launch gnome-nettool in the Finger tab showing
the USER in local host. This option can also
be invoked with -l option together.
-w DOMAIN | --whois=DOMAIN launch gnome-nettool in the Whois tab showing
the domain information for DOMAIN.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Launching the tool in Device tab for ath0
example % gnome-nettool --info=ath0
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
0 Application exited successfully
>0 Application exited with failure
FILES
The following files are used by this application:
/usr/bin/gnome-nettool Executable for front end for network tools.
ATTRIBUTES
Availability SUNWgnome-nettool
Interface stability Volatile
SEE ALSO
ping(1M), netstat(1M), traceroute(1M), dig(1M), finger(1), whois(1)
NOTES
Written by Ghee Teo, Sun Microsystems Inc., 2008
