Which ping implementation is Cygwin using?

What is the source of the implementation of ping is Cygwin using?

It apparently isn't GNU ping (because in GNU ping, the number of pings to send is decided with -c X, while in Cygwin ping, it's decided with -n X).

Is it a custom ping? BusyBox ping? Toybox ping? NetBSD ping? OpenBSD ping? FreeBSD ping? Something else?

hanshenrik

Posted 2019-09-09T08:00:49.713

Reputation: 447

Answers

It's Windows ping. Just run:

which ping

You'll get:

/cygdrive/c/WINDOWS/system32/ping

David Dai

Posted 2019-09-09T08:00:49.713

Reputation: 2 833

There's this github thread that confirms: https://github.com/msys2/MSYS2-packages/issues/153

– Bernhard Döbler – 2019-09-10T11:54:01.273

In case it's not clear to someone from reading this answer, this is the built-in ping command in Windows, not any sort of *nix ping command. – reirab – 2019-09-11T21:37:30.937

Cygwin ping is available on ping package from inetutils source

$ which ping
/usr/bin/ping 

$ cygcheck -f `which ping`
ping-1.9.4-1

x86_64 $ ping --help
Usage: ping [OPTION...] HOST ...
Send ICMP ECHO_REQUEST packets to network hosts.

 Options controlling ICMP request types:
      --address              send ICMP_ADDRESS packets (root only)
      --echo                 send ICMP_ECHO packets (default)
      --mask                 same as --address
      --timestamp            send ICMP_TIMESTAMP packets
  -t, --type=TYPE            send TYPE packets

 Options valid for all request types:

  -c, --count=NUMBER         stop after sending NUMBER packets
....

matzeri

Posted 2019-09-09T08:00:49.713

Reputation: 1 662

You should use command -v ping, not which ping. Also see How to check if a program exists from a Bash script? and the discussion around Posix and environments.

– jww – 2019-09-10T02:53:44.337

And which ping implementation is that? – OrangeDog – 2019-09-10T09:44:43.550

GNU https://www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/

– matzeri – 2019-09-10T22:02:36.000

@jww command -v ping and which ping produces exactly the same output on my system as the ping package is installed. Eventually you can use which -a ping – matzeri – 2019-09-10T22:08:49.577

@matzeri the point is it won't on everyone else's system – OrangeDog – 2019-09-11T16:18:54.780

@OrangeDog the question was about cygwin ping not windows ping. So you need the ping package installed if you want it. – matzeri – 2019-09-11T18:28:25.087