Compiling and installing: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It's a standard GNU configure-based dist, so all you should have to do is: tar xvzf xtraceroute-XXXX.tar.gz cd xtraceroute-XXXX ./configure make make install Hopefully. You can do "./configure --help" to see all the options. If you get an error related to gtkGL, or gtkgl or gtkglarea, please get the gtkglarea widget (see below for URL). The problem is that I swapped the OpenGL-widget between 0.8.10 and 0.8.11. This shouldn't have been a problem but the libraries have pretty unfortunate names. I used to use AOSASA Shigeru's gtkGL, and the new one is called gtkglarea, by Janne L|f. To make matters worse, the library names are libgtkGL.so and libgtkgl.so, respectively... This has caused no end of confusion, and I'm sorry, but I had to switch, gtkGL was unmaintained, and not really in a finished state. Also please see the INSTALL file, for generic help on GNU configure. Prerequisites: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You need these libraries to get this to work: * An OpenGL implementation, Mesa works nicely. (www.mesa3d.org) * GTK, the Gimp Toolkit. (www.gtk.org) * traceroute. * GtkGLArea, an OpenGL widget for GTK. (http://www.student.oulu.fi/~jlof/gtkglarea/) NOTE that this is not the same thing as the gtkGL widget, which is similar, and which I used up until version 0.8.10. * gtk-pixbuf, a library used to load different kinds of image files. (You have this if you have gnome, otherwise you can get it at ftp://ftp.gnome.org//pub/GNOME/unstable/sources/gdk-pixbuf/ ) And it gets a whole lot better if you also have: * The "host" program. There's two different implementations of it: * The one shipped with BIND. * An alternative version by Erik Wassenaar, available from ftp://ftp.nikhef.nl/pub/network/ , which is IMHO better in general. Either will work with xtraceroute though. If you don't have one of these, you can't use the RFC1876 ("LOC") information from the DNS (which is the best location info out there.) Please see the xtraceroute homepage for more details: http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3august/xt/ More on compiling: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You may want to have a look at tweaks.h, there are a few performance-options there. None of them make much difference anymore, but maybe it can help someone. Upgrading users who had a pre 0.8.12 version, note that the location of the data files has changed. It's logical now. Just move your old files. You need to set the location of your home machine or net in one of the database files or the program will bother you until you do. The database files are in the same format as the ones from NDG software. an entry for a net looks like this: 129.16 57 30n 12e #Chalmers University of Tech. and for a host like this: 128.150.53.1 mbone.cise.nsf.gov 38 52 11n 77 5 59w Other texture files: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The textures provided in the distribution are 800x400 png images, which is big enough for most people, and certainly enough to download if you're on a slow link. You might want to have a higher-resolution texture, if you have the texture-memory and bandwidth to handle it. There are a few good textures on http://www.radcyberzine.com/xglobe/ (Meant for use with Xglobe, but they'll work fine with xtraceroute too.) For the crowd with the really hairy hardware there's a 4096x2048 version of the default texture at http://www1.las.es/~amil/ssystem/ (Meant for use with Ssystem, but they'll work fine with xtraceroute too.) You can replace the earth.png file with these, or use the "--texture <file>" commandline argument. The default textures are scaled down versions of what's avaliable at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/ NDG cache files: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ NDG (www.ndg.com.au) is an australian company that makes networking tools for windows machines. They have a program which is very similar to xtraceroute, called "GeoBoy". It uses large databases of locations of central sites, backbone routers, etc. I have support for those files in xtraceroute. These files improve the "accuracy" of xtraceroute a good deal, but it will still run without them. Install the files to the (prefix)/share/xtraceroute directory (the same directory that earth.png gets installed to.) A good thing to do would be to get the NDG cache files from http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~d3august/xt/dl/ Alternativly, you can get them directly from NDG, at ftp://ftp.ndg.com.au/pub/demos/win/gb/geoboy_cache.exe It's an archive in some sort of microsoftish install format. I don't know of a way to unpack them under unix, so I went to a win95 machine, installed the stuff and FTPd them over. If anyone knows of a tool to unpack this stuff under unix, please let me know. There are however a number of errors in these files, I have two diffs that can be used to patch them. They are in the misc directory. patch them like this patch <path to the cache files>/networks.cache < misc/networks.diff patch <path to the cache files>/hosts.cache < misc/hosts.diff This will fail if you transferred them wrongly from the windows machine you unpacked them on. (you need LFs at the ends of the lines, not CR,LF like DOS does.) It can also fail if you have the wrong version of the NDG caches. I used the latest one as of this writing, version 1.6) But the easiest thing to do is to get the (all patched up and ready to use) ndg_files.tar.gz from the download area at my site. Many thanks to NDG software for letting me redistribute them. LOC data in the DNS system. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The Correct way to tell the geographical location of a host on the internet is to ask the DNS. The way to do that is described in RFC1876, which defines the LOC (for location) RR. It's not exactly widely used, but you see it every now and then. Hopefully this program can help change that. How to get LOC data for your site into the DNS: Ask your local sysadmin that maintain your nameserver to read the RFC. It's a fairly easy read as RFCs go, but it might help if you find out the location of your site in advance using, say, a GPS or a site like http://www.mapblast.com. Sysadmins are busy people. GeoIP Support This product (optionally) uses GeoLite data created by MaxMind, available from <a href="http://www.maxmind.com">http://www.maxmind.com</a>. Acknowledgements ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (I must have forgotten some people here. Please let me know if you feel left out.) Erik Wassenaar Wrote good versions of host, traceroute and ping. Mark Kilgard Wrote GLUT, which I used first, before GTK was trendy. Also I have taken a lot of inspiration (as well as actual code) from many of the examples in the glut distribution. Brian Paul Wrote the Mesa graphics library. The examples in that distribution also gave me many ideas. Constantine Thomas Keeps a nice collection of maps (The default texture is from his site.) at www.lancs.ac.uk/postgrad/thomasc1/render/maps.htm AOSASA Shigeru Wrote gtkGL, a pretty nice GL widget for gtk. It made me drop GLUT and switch to GTK. Janne L|f Wrote GtkGLArea, the GL widget I currently use. David Blythe Wrote the sphere-tesselating code I use. I just added texture coordinate generation. The Gtk People Wrote gtk. Enough said. Sam Leffler Wrote libtiff. The Gnome people Wrote gdk-pixbuf. NDG software Wrote GeoBoy, who gave me permission to use and distribute their cachefiles. Many People Mailed me good suggestions. Please keep it up. Fewer People Sent me patches for stuff. They are credited in the ChangeLog file. Keep that up too. General notes: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The ends of any connection are the hardest for xtraceroute to place, since the stuff in the middle generally are major backbones etc, which have a higher probability of being in the databases. There's not a whole lot to do about the far end, but A Good Thing To Do is to add your machine (or your net, if all of it is in the same place) to one of the local databases (yours or the site-wide). HOWEVER: If your local end of the network is one of the private segments (10.x.x.x or 192.168.x.x most probably) do not add those as your home net, as those might turn up in other parts of the traceroute. Use host/domain-names instead. In fact, if xtraceroute can't get a good fix on the location of the first site it finds (your machine) it'll display an annoying window, asking you to enter it. It's for your own good, honest. :) Some Red Hat linux (5.x) users might need to change the options for traceroute. (This is only if a simple "traceroute <machine> doesn't work for you. The problem is that it apparently sometimes use the wrong interface.) In that case, look up the traceopts string in main.c, and add whatever you need. OR, do something like "traceroute -whateveryouneed <machine> | xtraceroute --stdin" OR, (the Correct Solution), upgrade your traceroute. A patch to update it is at ftp://ftp.bluetree.ie/pub/traceroute (And an RPM, if you're into that.) If you're using the 2.4.4 linux kernel, it has some fork-related problems. Xtraceroute still works, but the spinner (in the lower right corner of the window) will get confused and never stop spinning. It's not really a big deal, and if you think it is, upgrade your kernel! (2.4.3, 2.4.5, and most of the intermediate preX and acX kernels are also OK.) /August.