When I use mtr, traceroute or xtraceroute

[eBopBob]

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Hey folks.

I'm currently downloading xtraceroute, so no idea if it's the same as mtr and traceroute but I presume so since it needs traceroute.

Traceroute and mtr have to be run in root, via terminal. Now... I'm worried that I'm open to risk due to the fact I've SUed into root while on the net, and then am doing traceroute.

Am I right to be worried, and not use traceroute?
In Windows I would near to always fire up MS-DOS Promt and do tracert and various other things. In Windows, I've no idea if there was a risk, but I didn't know about one, so I wasn't worried. In Linux everyone says don't go on the net while in root because it's hyper-dangerous.

So, here I am, worried whether or not I should use traceroute or mtr because I need to SU into root to use 'em, lol.

So, should I use 'em without worry? Should I have concern and just use one of the multiple traceroute programs on the net??

What should I do???

Thanks

[variant]

hwenyou su to root in an xsession then all the aps in x including x are running as the use you started them as.. they only thing running as root will be what you start from the "su"'d terminal you dont need to be root to use traceroute

[eBopBob]

ahh k thanks.

you dont need to be root to use traceroute

When I open up Konsole, and type traceroute, it says "command not found". When I try as root, it works- But I can ping when not root. Maybe it's something to do with the fact I'm using SuSE 9.1 Pro?
Or am I using the wrong command, or what?

Thanks

[ra21vi]

thats a strange prob.
Maybe you can change the user/group priviledge for that traceroute program, and then see, what happens.
I don't think there would be anyprob when u su and run traceroute, as only u r firing traceroute as super user, not the services running on the system, that might do some damages, or some intruder may break into using traceroute program u r using

[nutshell42]

When I still used SuSE they didn't include the /sbin and /usr/sbin directories in the $PATH of normal users therefore bash can't find it

try "/usr/sbin/traceroute" instead of "traceroute" as user

if you want to solve that problem permanently look in the docs where you can change the $PATH variable. Unfortunatly the configuration of bash is slightly different from distribution to distribution so I'm not sure in which of the 6 config files you should look =)

[caprarius]

open up the file ".bashrc" in your home directory using your favorite text editor

in the $PATH line add "/sbin:/usr/sbin"

these are colon separated values for two paths where a lot of this sort of stuff lives

you can now use the non-privileged functions of commands like traceroute, ip addr show, or ifconfig.

Have fun.

Caprarius