
   --- STinG Tools Directory ---
   =============================


Here you can find a number of tools that are useful when operating
STinG. Currently these tools are PING.PRG, TRACROUT.PRG, SAVE_IP.PRG,
SYSINFO.TTP and SHUTDOWN.PRG. See below for explanations for each of
the tools, and how to use them.


1. ----- PING.PRG -----

PING.PRG is a stand-alone version of the Ping tool that is integrated
into the Dialer, being somewhat less flexible. When started, it'll
ask you which IP address to ping, and how many echo requests should
be sent. After clicking 'Ok', the given number of echo requests are
sent to the machine with the given address. Doing this, any two sub-
sequent requests are a delay of 100 ms apart. During the entire time
ping is ready to receive reply packets, ping will measure the time
that elapsed between the departure of the request and arrival of the
corresponding reply packet ("Round Trip Time"). Some statistics are 
shown at the end.

Ping is mainly used to check connectivity. If for instance you want
to access some server, but the client can't connect, you should first
try to resolve the IP address. You can use the Dialer's resolver tool 
for that. Once you got the IP address, you can enter it into the Ping
tool, and it'll tell you if the remote machine responds to requests 
(i.e. is connected and running). It tells you too the time each data
packet needs to travel all the way forth and back. Depending on the
way and the network load this figure should be between a tenth and a
half of a second. More indicates a congested network, and it might be
worth to log off and try again later.


2. ----- TRACROUT.PRG -----

This tool is a stand-alone version of the TraceRoute tool that is in-
tegrated into the Dialer, being somewhat less flexible. When started, 
it'll ask you for the IP address of the machine the way to which is
to be traced. Remember delivery of packets works by letting the data
'hop' from one machine to the next until the destination is reached.
TracRout sends off a packet towards that machine with a time-to-live
of 1 hop. This means it won't go any further than the first router,
which will send back some information that it has expired the packet,
and discarded it. From this information TracRout can find out the IP 
address of the first router. Subsequent routers are found by repeat-
ing this with a time-to-live of two hops, then three, and so on. This
continues until the destination machine replies, and TracRout knows
it has traced the whole way to the destination machine.

TracRout will show you the entire way, IP address by IP address while
the procedure goes on. Occasionly a packet may go lost, TracRout will
time out then and ask you to either abort or retry (resend the packet
with the same time-to-live number).


3. ----- SAVE_IP.TTP -----

SAVE_IP.TTP is a little program that is intented to be run from the 
login batch of the Dialer. It expects two parameters on the command-
line : The first is the path to a file to be created, and the second
is a STinG port name. See the sample LOGIN.BAT for an example. Basi-
cally it reads the IP address set for the specified port, and writes 
it into the specified file. This way you always have your IP address 
present, even if it's dynamically assigned.

What for, you'll ask. Well, there is no point if you login with PPP.
If you use SLIP however, it can be very useful. It might happen that
your computer crashes (all modern computers have this feature - just
look up RFC #748 for some description of how to toggle this feature)
and often if won't bother to shut down your phone connection before.
You can take advantage of this, by simply reconnecting without doing
another dial-in. With some busy ISPs the benefit is invaluable since
a completely new dial-in will take hours.

To do a reconnection, first look up the IP address that you've been
using. Go to the 'STinG Port Setup' CPX, change to your modem port,
and enter the IP address. Reset the MTU and make sure you have VJHC
set just like it was before the crash. Then click 'Active' and 'Ok'
and you're connected again.

Note it solely depends on the HSMODEM settings, if your machine will
drop the line when rebooting after the crash. Configure your HSMODEM
to NOT drop the DTR line, in order to keep an existing connection.


4. ----- SYSINFO.TTP -----

SYSINFO.TTP will list a lot of internal information on STinG. This
includes version number information for STinG and each of the loaded 
modules, authors and compile dates, error statistics, addresses of
basepages of the various modules, supported ports, and all important
common parameters.

This is of little relevance for you if you only use STinG. However
if you want to send bug reports, or if you want to do some debugging
(if you're a programmer), it will give you important information.


5. ----- SHUTDOWN.PRG -----

With some weird configurations with older software that do not be-
have very well you might encounter the problem that you cannot warm
boot the machine without crashing it due to STinG. This is because
STinG hangs in some system vectors. Also if you use very critical
software that requires a clean machine, hitherto you had to rename
STING.PRG to STING.PRZ and cold boot the machine.

SHUTDOWN.PRG removes STinG from both the cookie jar and the system
vectors it hangs in. Basically the machine is in the state as if
STinG had not been booted in the first place, even the memory STinG
occupied is released now. So likelihood is very good that warm boot,
or your critical software will work now if before you had to disable
STinG to make it work. If you're short of memory, and do not need
STinG for the moment, you can run SHUTDOWN.PRG too for regaining the
memory STinG had occupied before.

Some systems actively support such tools. MagiC for instance has a
shutdown program that executes all binaries in MagiC's STOP direc-
tory. So simply drop SHUTDOWN.PRG into that directory and forget it.
You'll notice it's presence by a small shutdown delay of about three
seconds, which is for properly desactivating STinG ports.



Happy STinGing.

Peter Rottengatter
perot@pallas.amp.uni-hannover.de
http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~perot
