[Nagiosplug-devel] check_ping and check_icmp confusion

[Jason Crawford]

On 2/22/06, gh <gh at 3gupload.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-02-22 at 18:36 +0100, Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> > gh wrote:
> > >From what I can tell check_ping has been deprecated in favor of
> > > check_icmp. Is this the case or are there certain systems or conditions
> > > that make check_ping favorable or even necessary?
> > >
> >
> > check_icmp had some problems on systems with 32-bit process id's in the
> > early days (causing it to mark the packets wrong and then not
> > recognizing them when they returned). It also used to calculate timings
> > slightly wrong. Both those problems are solved long since, however. Now
> > there are no real reasons to use check_ping instead of check_icmp.
> >
>
> What do people think about just dropping check_ping from the next
> version of the plugins package to avoid all this unnecessary confusion
> that is evident on the mailing lists and replace it with a symlink to
> check_icmp for backwards compatibility?
>

I just don't like the fact that check_icmp must be setuid root or run
as root. Personally, I like to have as few setuid binaries as possible
on my system, as well as little running as root as possible (in order
to run check_icmp as root, the parent nagios stuff must be running as
root as well). The great thing about check_ping is that it uses the
already setuid ping binary.

Jason