From: Daniel Berger <djberge@...>
Date: 2003-03-27T06:58:54+09:00
Subject: [RFC] PingExternal behavior in net-pingsimple - down hosts

Hi all,

I noticed a fatal flaw in the PingExternal class in net-pingsimple.  If
a host is down, the "no answer" response from ping goes to stdout, not
stderr as I thought.  As a result, you can end up with false positives. 
Technically, however, the ping itself has not failed.  It simply may not
be the behavior you might expect.

So, here's the question.  If a "no answer from host" string in stdout
results from a ping, should it:

1) Be considered a failed ping, with the 'no answer' text being stored
in the 'exception' attribute.
2) Be considered a successful ping, but with the 'no answer' text being
stored in the 'warning' attribute.
3) Do something else

I'm leaning towards option 1, but I'm willing to listen to other folks'
opinions on this.  Comments wanted.

Regards,

Dan

-- 
a = [74, 117, 115, 116, 32, 65, 110, 111, 116, 104, 101, 114, 32, 82]
a.push(117,98, 121, 32, 72, 97, 99, 107, 101, 114)
puts a.pack("C*")