Cheops -- Network User Interface
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Frequently Asked Questions

The Great Pyramid of Cheops
  1. What's a cheop?
  2. Cheops (KEE-ops) was an ancient Egyptian pharoah who built the largest pyramid at Giza
  1. Why doesn't it work over an IP masqueraded connection?
  2. If I knew the answer, it would be fixed by now
  1. When I run cheops, it doesn't discover anything. What's wrong?
  2. I'm not quite sure why, but it's very important that the IP address of the hostname, as returned by the hostname command be the same as the actual machine. This is almost always the problem.
  1. When I run cheops, the wait icon never goes away and it simply says "Processing Replies". What's wrong?
  2. Cheops has trouble with gtk 1.2 for some reason. Enabling gnome support will help make this problem go away, but clearly there is either a bug in the gtk or a bug in cheops. If anyone has a fix for this problem, I'd love to hear from you.
  1. When I run cheops, it quits with "Segmentation fault". What's wrong?
  2. Cheops has trouble with gtk 1.2 for some reason. Enabling gnome support will help make this problem go away, but clearly there is either a bug in the gtk or a bug in cheops. If anyone has a fix for this problem, I'd love to hear from you. Coders: Please help me debug cheops on gtk 1.2... this is a major stumbling block right now.
  1. Do I need GNOME to run Cheops?
  2. No.  Just be sure "USE_GNOME=1" is commented with a "#" sign in the Makefile
  1. I get some error about ICMP_MINLEN not being defined?
  2. Cheops 0.50 did not support libc5.  Upgrade to the latest version.
  1. I get some error about ip_csum not being a member of struct ip?
  2. Comment out the #define ip_sum ip_csum in libc.h.  Someone write me an autoconf please.
  1. I get some error about -lresolv?
  2. Read and edit the Makefile, and comment out the line LIBS+=-lresolv.  Autoconf, please!
  1. My Windows NT machine is detected as a Cisco!/My Macintosh is detected as an SCO box!
  2. I'll modify these entries, but queso isn't perfect.  Sometimes two OS's reply the same way.
  1. I get some error about -lresolv?
  2. Read and edit the Makefile, and comment out the line LIBS+=-lresolv.  Autoconf, please!
  1. Isn't cheops just a hacker tool? Doesn't it just let people hack my network?
  2. No, it isn't. Cheops provides a simple interface that eases visualization and access of your network and network resources. The technologies it uses are essentially ping, traceroute, halfscanning, and queso, all of which have been around for a while. Cheops is no more a hacker tool than a file manager is because it presents the filesystem in a way that is easier to visualize and access. Cheops makes no attempt at being stealthy (beyond what is necessary to avoid unnecessarily starting up services) or hiding what it's doing, and as such would make a really terrible hacking tool anyway.

    As as system administrator, Cheops provides you a convenient tool you can use to pre-empt hacking by knowing just what is on your network and just what services (and what versions of some of them) are running.

    In any case, if you are not the administrator of your network, particularly if you are on a campus network, you should probably ask your administrators if it is acceptable to use cheops on your network, because it will almost certainly set off alarms if you are on a paranoid network. I will not be responsible if you get in trouble for using cheops!

    Remember, good security is about being prepared, not just hoping that nobody notices your front door is open.

  1. Is there a commercial version of cheops
  2. Yes, it's available here and is available under a single user license, for $150, or a site license which ranges from $500 to $5000 depending on options. For more information, contact the author.


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Cheops -- Network User Interface (c) Copyright 1998, 1999, Mark Spencer