Network Troubleshooting Tools

Appendix A. Software Sources

This appendix begins with a brief discussion of retrieving and installing software tools. It then provides a list of potential sources for the software. First I describe several excellent general sources for tools, then I list specific sources.

Much of this software requires root privileges and could contain dangerous code. Be sure you get your code from reliable sources. Considerable effort has been made to provide canonical sources, but no guarantee can be made for the trustworthiness of the code or the sources listed here. Most of these programs are available as FreeBSD ports or Linux packages. I have used them, when available, for testing for this book.

Installing Software

I have not tried to describe how to install individual tools in this book. First, in my experience, a set of directions that is accurate for one version of the software may not be accurate for the next version. Even more likely, directions for one operating system may fail miserably for another. This is frequently true even for different versions of the same operating system. Consequently, trying to develop a reasonable set of directions for each tool for a variety of operating systems was considered unfeasible. In general, the best source of information, i.e., the only information that is likely to be reliable, is the information that comes with the software itself. Read the directions!

Having said this, I have tried to give some generic directions for installing software. At best, ...