3

I am using Ubuntu 14.0.4 LTS with Kernel 4.8.0-46-generic. I am trying to ping a peer device with ping interval lower than 1 second e.g 0.2 but I am not able to do that. I get the following error :

ping: bad timing interval

I execute ping in sudo mode but still without success. Have any one encountered this issue before?

Note: I tried on the other device which has Kernel 4.2.0 and it worked under sudo mode.

4
  • sudo ping -c3 -i 0.15 www.google.com works for me.
    – chili555
    Mar 31, 2017 at 20:48
  • what do you get for ping -V? i.e. what version are you using? Mar 31, 2017 at 22:54
  • @DougSmythies the version of the ping is s20150815. It is strange because the version on the other laptop which has Kernel 4.2.0 is s20121221
    – IoT
    Apr 3, 2017 at 17:19
  • Well, that exact same version works for me. Apr 3, 2017 at 20:28

4 Answers 4

3

The manual to ping states that only the super-user may set an interval to less than 0.2 seconds.

   -i interval
          Wait  interval seconds between sending each packet.  The default
          is to wait for one second between each packet normally,  or  not
          to  wait in flood mode. Only super-user may set interval to val‐
          ues less than 0.2 seconds.

I tried this out on a clean 14.04 installation and sub 0.2 intervals only work for the super-user, this is to stop ping floods from unprivileged users.

1
  • I have already executed the ping with sudo and in sudo bash and I am still getting the same error. However it worked on the other machine with Kernel 4.2.0
    – IoT
    Mar 31, 2017 at 20:57
3

In my case ping was using the current locale to interpret the interval value: ping -i 0.3 <ip> didn't work but ping -i 0,3 <ip> does.

This bug Decimal separator in ping -i is locale dependent from 2015 in Fedora's bugzilla says it is a bug(and I agree: scripts shouldn't change behavior depending on the system's locale)

This bug is affecting Ubuntu 20.04 (reported here)

1

Try with command

sudo ping XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -A

This command send packet as fast as possible More option you have here

0

Try to use uppercase I

sudo ping -I eth1 111.111.111.111

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .