pingd(8)

📦 version 1.14, in epel 9, fedora 43, fedora 44

💖 pingd — the node up/down monitoring daemon, bestie edition 💖

okay so real quick: this is pingd(8), the section 8 manual page for pingd, and it's literally the vibe check for your whole cluster. let's get into it 🫶

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

pingd [OPTIONS]

that's it. that's the whole summoning ritual. periodt.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so pingd is a daemon, meaning it's just out here living its life in the background, and what it does is regularly send out ICMP pings to figure out whether nodes are still up or still down. like it's literally just checking in on everyone. "hey bestie, you alive?" 💅

and you can configure the whole thing using the pingd configuration file. but wait, there's more — the nodes you wanna ping can also be configured via loadable modules. iconic behavior honestly.

go read the pingd.conf(5) manpage for the extra deets, i'm not gonna gatekeep but that's where the good stuff lives 🎀

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -h, --help — outputs help. your classic "help me bestie" button 🌈
  • -v, --version — outputs version. for when you need to know exactly which era of pingd you're in ⭐

🦋 CLUSTERLIST MODULES 🦋

so here's the tea: the nodes that pingd should ping can also be configured with a clusterlist module. the clusterlist module can go get you a list of all the cluster nodes. and there are several possible clusterlist formats that can be parsed — yes, several, we love options 💖

by default, pingd searches for the following clusterlist modules in the following order:

  • genders — uses a genders database and the genders library to determine all nodes in the cluster. see http://genders.sourceforge.net. it's giving library science but make it cluster ✨
  • hostsfile — uses a file that lists the hostname of every node in the cluster, one per line, each on a separate line. the default hostsfile is /etc/hostsfile. simple, clean, no notes 💅

and if none of the above are found, then bestie you have no choice — the nodes must be configured via the pingd configuration file. no module, no ping list, no cap 😭

💜 FILES 💜

  • /etc/pingd.conf
  • /usr/lib64/pingd

👑 ORIGIN 👑

developed by Albert Chu <chu11@llnl.gov> on LLNL's Linux clusters. we stan a legend 🫶

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

and that's the whole page bestie, no gatekeeping here 💖 this was pingd version 1.14, from way back in May 2005 — yeah she's vintage, she's an icon, she's still out here monitoring nodes. slay, honestly 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from