MTR

What is MTR?

mtr combines the functionality of the 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single network diagnostic tool.

As mtr starts, it investigates the network connection between the host mtr runs on and a user-specified destination host. After it determines the address of each network hop between the machines, it sends a sequence ICMP ECHO requests to each one to determine the quality of the link to each machine. As it does this, it prints running statistics about each machine. For a preview take a look at the screenshots.

mtr is distributed under the GNU General Public License. See the COPYING file for details.

Where to get MTR

mtr is now maintained in a git repository at github.

Alternatively you can get MTR from the BitWizard FTP site at ftp://ftp.bitwizard.nl/mtr/ . I'm still struggling to make my new "make a release script" adapt to the new situation with git. If the latest version is missing, and you can't get it from github for one reason or another, let me know and I'll have to make one for you manually.

Compatibility

Mtr uses autoconf. This should allow compatibility with a large range of operating systems. Feel free to report problems. We can then try to iron them out.

I don't have much experience in using autoconf. Therefore I'm eager to learn more about it, as it seems a very useful tool. I've been editing small sections of the autoconf files, but I welcome suggestions on how to do things better. There usually IS a way to do it better....

Compiling MTR

Compiling mtr should be as easy as "make". If it is harder for you, your computer is misconfigured, or there is a problem with mtr that we should take care of. Please report this kind of problems.

Questions / bugs / Mailing list.

mtr has moved to launchpad as the bug tracking system. If you have a bug, preferably with a patch to fix it please enter it into the tracking system. MTR bugtracking at Launchpad.

The github bug tracking system also seems to work comfortably.

The mailing list was dismantled when I noticed that ALL messages from the last two years were spam, and no serious messages at all were in the logs. Mail me or submit a bug request or preferably a patch. :-)

Binary distributions

Ryan's build and/or mirror apparenltly stopped working somewhere in 1999, 14 years ago and nobody noticed. Apparently not worth maintaining.

kanedaaa has packages up to slackware 12.1, also a while ago. Possibly because mtr is included in the distribution.

The debian distribution has mtr builtin, so it would be preferrable to just use that.

The freebsd ports link still works and has a reasonably recent version.

Ryan Weaver has been making RPMs for mtr. He puts them on his ftp site, which I mirror onto ftp://ftp.bitwizard.nl/mtr/rpms/ .
kanedaaa builds slackware packages at: http://kaneda.bohater.net/slackware/packages/.
The freeBSD team makes binaries at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-stable/net/ Substitute the correct packages-..-current if you are running a "-current" version. If anybody can tell me how I can get mirror to flatten the symlinks that they use, I'll mirror them here at BitWizard.
The debian team makes binaries at ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/binary-i386/net/mtr_0.39-1.deb The mirror worked in 30 seconds, no problems there. So you can get the package from the BitWizard site too.
Michael Collard no longer builds and maintains x64_64 binaries at: http://members.iinet.net.au/~quadfour/projects.html. (the link is dead. I don't expect Michael to still do this, If he does and you know the new location, tell me.)

If you want to contribute binaries in a way similar to this, feel free to volunteer.

Live on the web

Christian Pekeler has setup a web-frontend for running mtr from six (or maybe more by now) different places around the globe on mtr.guru . This is great for figuring out if your server is really down or just unreachable from part of the world. Of course, if all of Christian's servers can reach your target, that doesn't guarantee that it is reachable from everywhere, but it does make it clear that a possible problem is not "near" your server network-wise.

History

MTR was written by Matt Kimball, with contributions by many people. Take a look at the "AUTHORS" file in the distribution. Roger Wolff took over maintenance of MTR in october 1998.

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