README.rst

connvitals

Checks a machine's connection to a specific host or list of hosts in terms of packet loss, icmp latency, routing, and anything else that winds up getting added.

Note: Does not recognize duplicate hosts passed on ``argv`` and will test each as though unique.

Note: Under normal execution conditions, requires super-user privileges to run.

Dependencies

The utility runs on Python 3 (tested 3.6.3), but requires no non-standard external modules.

However, in most cases you will need setuptools after installation, and if you are using an older version of Python (< 3.5) then you will need to install the backport of typing. These should be handled for you if you are using an .rpm file or pip to install connvitals.

Installation

Binary packages

Binary packages are offered in .rpm format for Fedora/CentOS/RHEL and .whl format for all other operating systems under 'Releases'.

Via pip (standard)

By far the simplest way to install this package is to simply use pip like so:

pip install connvitals

Note that it's likely you'll need to either run this command as an administrator (Windows), with sudo (Everything Else), or with the --user option (Everything Including Windows).

Via pip (From This Repository)

If for some reason the standard python package index is unavailable to you, you can install directly from this repository without needing to manually download it by running

user@hostname ~ $ pip install git+https://github.com/connvitals.git#egg=connvitals

Note that you may need to run this command as root/with sudo or with --user, depending on your pip installation. Also ensure that pip is installing packages for Python 3.x. Typically, if both Python2 and Python3 exist on a system with pip installed for both, the pip to use for Python3 packages is accessible as pip3.

Manually

To install manually, first download or clone this repository. Then, in the directory you downloaded/cloned it into, run the command

user@hostname ~/connvitals $ python setup.py install

Note that it's highly likely that you will need to run this command as root/with sudo. Also ensure that the python command points to a valid Python3 interpreter (you can check with python --version). On many systems, it is common for python to point to a Python2 interpreter. If you have both Python3 and Python2 installed, it's common that they be accessible as python3 and python2, respectively.

Finally, if you are choosing this option because you do not have a Python3 pip installation, you may not have setuptools installed. On most 'nix distros, this can be installed without installing pip by running sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools (Debian/Ubuntu), sudo pacman -S python3-setuptools (Arch), sudo yum install python3-setuptools (RedHat/Fedora/CentOS), or brew install python3-setuptools (macOS with brew installed).

Usage

connvitals [ -h --help ] [ -V --version ] [ -H --hops HOPS ] [ -p --pings PINGS ] [ -P --no-ping ] [ -t --trace ] [ --payload-size PAYLOAD ] [ -s --port-scan ] host [ hosts... ]

• hosts - The host or hosts to check connection to. May be ipv4 addresses, ipv6 addresses, fqdn's, or any combination thereof.
• -h or --help - Prints help text, then exits successfully.
• -V or --version - Prints the program's version information, then exits successfully.
• -H or --hops - Sets max hops for route tracing (default 30).
• -p or --pings - Sets the number of pings to use for aggregate statistics (default 4).
• -P or --no-ping - Don't run ping tests.
• -t or --trace - Run route tracing.
• -j or --json - Prints output as one line of JSON-formatted text.
• -s or --port-scan - Perform a limited scan on each hosts' ports.
• --payload-size - Sets the size (in B) of ping packet payloads (default 41).

Output Format

Normal Output

For each host tested, results are printed in the newline-separated order "host->Ping Results->Route Trace Results->Port Scan Results" where "host" is the name of the host, as passed on argv. If the name passed for a host on argv is not what ends up being used to test connection vitals (e.g. the program may translate google.com into 216.58.218.206), then the "host" line will contain host-as-typed (host IP used).

Ping tests output their results as a tab-separated list containing - in this order - minimum round-trip time in milliseconds (rtt), mean rtt, maximum rtt, rtt standard deviation, and packet loss in percent. If all packets are lost, the min/mean/max/std are all reported as -1.

Route traces output their results as a list of network hops, separated from each other by newlines. Each network hop is itself a tab-separated list of data containing - in this order - a network address for the machine this hop ended at, and the rtt of a packet traversing this route. If the packet was lost, a star (*) is shown instead of an address and rtt.

Port scans check for http(s) servers on ports 80 and 443, and MySQL servers running on port 3306. It outputs its results as a tab-separated list containing - in this order - port 80 results, port 443 results, port 3306 results. Results for ports 80 and 443 consist of sending a HEAD / HTTP/1.1 request and recording "rtt (in milliseconds), response code, server" from the server's response. "server" will be the contents of the "Server" header if found within the first kilobyte of the response, but if it is not found will simply be "Unknown". Port 3306 results report the version of the MySQL server listening on that port if one is found (Note that this version number may be mangled if the server allows unauthenticated connection or supports some other automatic authentication mechanism for the machine running connvitals). If a server is not found on a port, its results are reported as "None", indicating no listening server. If a server on port 80 expects encryption or a server on port 443 does not expect encryption, they will be "erroneously" reported as not existing.

Example Output (with localhost running mysql server):

root@hostname / # connvitals -stp 100 google.com 2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e localhost
google.com (172.217.3.14)
3.543   4.955   11.368  1.442   0.000
10.169.240.1    3.108
10.168.253.8    2.373
10.168.254.252  3.659
10.168.255.226  2.399
198.178.8.94    3.059
69.241.22.33    51.104
68.86.103.13    16.470
68.86.92.121    5.488
68.86.86.77 4.257
68.86.83.6  3.946
173.167.58.142  5.290
*
216.239.49.247  4.491
172.217.3.14    3.927
56.446, 200, gws    75.599, 200, gws    None
2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e
3.446   4.440   12.422  1.526   0.000
2001:558:1418:49::1 8.846
2001:558:3da:74::1  1.453
2001:558:3da:6f::1  2.955
2001:558:3da:1::2   2.416
2001:558:3c2:15::1  2.605
2001:558:fe1c:6::1  47.516
2001:558:1c0:65::1  45.442
2001:558:0:f71e::1  9.165
*
*
2001:559:0:9::6 3.984
*
2001:4860:0:1::10ad 3.970
2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e    3.891
57.706, 200, gws    77.736, 200, gws    None
localhost (127.0.0.1)
0.045   0.221   0.665   0.112   1.000
127.0.0.1   0.351
None    None    0.165, 5.7.2

JSON Output Format

The JSON output format option (-j or --json) will render the output on one line. Each host is represented as an object, indexed by its address. This is not necessarily the same as the host as given on the command line, which may be found as an attribute of the host, named 'name'.

Results for ping tests are a dictionary attribute named 'ping', with floating point values labeled as 'min', 'avg', 'max', 'std' and 'loss'. As with all floating point numbers in json output, these values are not rounded or truncated and are printed exactly as calculated, to the greatest degree of precision afforded by the system.

Route traces are output as a list attribute, labeled 'trace', where each each step in the route is itself a list. The first element in each list is either the address of the discovered host at that point in the route, or the special string '*' which indicates the packet was lost and no host was discovered at this point. The second element, if it exists, is a floating point number giving the round-trip-time of the packet sent at this step, in milliseconds. Once again, unlike normal output format, these floating point numbers are not rounded or truncated and are printed exactly as calculated, to the greatest degree of precision afforded by the system.

Port scans are represented as a dictionary attribute named 'scan'. The label of each element of 'scan' is the name of the server checked for. 'http' and 'https' results will report a dictionary of values containing:

* 'rtt' - the time taken for the server to respond

* 'response code' - The decimal representation of the server's response code to a HEAD / HTML/1.1 request.

* 'server' - the name of the server, if found within the first kilobyte of the server's response, otherwise "Unknown".

'mysql' fields will also contain a dictionary of values, and that dictionary should also contain the 'rtt' field with the same meaning as for 'http' and 'https', but will replace the other two fields used by those protocols with 'version', which will give the version number of the MySQL server.

If any of these three server types is not detected, the value of its label will be the string 'None', rather than a dictionary of values.

Example JSON Output (with localhost running mysql server):

root@hostname / # sudo connvitals -j --port-scan -tp 100 google.com 2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e localhost

{"addr":"172.217.3.14","name":"google.com","ping":{"min": 3.525257110595703, "avg": 4.422152042388916, "max": 5.756855010986328, "std": 0.47761748430602524, "loss": 0.0},"trace":[["*"], ["10.168.253.8", 2.187013626098633], ["10.168.254.252", 4.266977310180664], ["10.168.255.226", 3.283977508544922], ["198.178.8.94", 2.7751922607421875], ["69.241.22.33", 3.7970542907714844], ["68.86.103.13", 3.8001537322998047], ["68.86.92.121", 7.291316986083984], ["68.86.86.77", 5.874156951904297], ["68.86.83.6", 4.465818405151367], ["173.167.58.142", 4.443883895874023], ["*"], ["216.239.49.231", 4.090785980224609], ["172.217.3.14", 4.895925521850586]],"scan":{"http": {"rtt": 59.095, "response code": "200", "server": "gws"}, "https": {"rtt": 98.238, "response code": "200", "server": "gws"}, "mysql": "None"}}}
{"addr":"2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e","name":"2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e","ping":{"min": 3.62396240234375, "avg": 6.465864181518555, "max": 24.2769718170166, "std": 5.133322111766303, "loss": 0.0},"trace":[["*"], ["2001:558:3da:74::1", 1.9710063934326172], ["2001:558:3da:6f::1", 2.904176712036133], ["2001:558:3da:1::2", 2.5751590728759766], ["2001:558:3c2:15::1", 2.7141571044921875], ["2001:558:fe1c:6::1", 4.7512054443359375], ["2001:558:1c0:65::1", 3.927946090698242], ["*"], ["*"], ["2001:558:0:f8c1::2", 3.635406494140625], ["2001:559:0:18::2", 3.8270950317382812], ["*"], ["2001:4860:0:1::10ad", 4.517078399658203], ["2607:f8b0:400f:807::200e", 3.91387939453125]],"scan":{"http": {"rtt": 51.335, "response code": "200", "server": "gws"}, "https": {"rtt": 70.521, "response code": "200", "server": "gws"}, "mysql": "None"}}}
{"addr":"127.0.0.1","name":"localhost","ping":{"min": 0.04792213439941406, "avg": 0.29621124267578125, "max": 0.5612373352050781, "std": 0.0995351687014057, "loss": 0.0},"trace":[["127.0.0.1", 1.9199848175048828]],"scan":{"http": "None", "https": "None", "mysql": {"rtt": 0.148, "version": "5.7.2"}}}}

Error Output Format

When an error occurs, it is printed to stderr in the following format:

EE: <Error Type>: <Error Description>:  -   <Timestamp>

EE: is prepended for ease of readability in the common case that stdout and stderr are being read/parsed from the same place. <Error Type> is commonly just str or Exception, but can in some cases represent more specific error types. <Error Description> holds extra information describing why the error occurred. Note that stack traces are not commonly logged, and only occur when the program crashes for unforseen reasons. <Timestamp> is the time at which the error occurred, given in the system's ctime format, which will usually look like Mon Jan 1 12:59:59 2018.

Some errors do not affect execution in a large scope, and are printed largely for debugging purposes. These are printed as warnings to stderr in the following format:

WW: <Warning> - <Timestamp>

Where WW: is prepended both for ease of readability and to differentiate it from an error, <Warning> is the warning message, and <Timestamp> is the time at which the warning was issued, given in the system's ctime format.

In the case that stderr is a tty, connvitals will attempt to print errors in red and warnings in yellow, using ANSI control sequences (supports all VT/100-compatible terminal emulators).