fping

April 25, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Github Status

Github Build Status Github Build and Push Docker Image Status Github CodeQL Status

External Services

Coverage Status Coverity Scan Build Status

fping

fping is a program to send ICMP echo probes to network hosts, similar to ping, but much better performing when pinging multiple hosts. fping has a long long story: Roland Schemers did publish a first version of it in 1992 and it has established itself since then as a standard tool.

Current maintainer:
David Schweikert <david@schweikert.ch>

Website:
https://fping.org/

Mailing-list:
https://groups.google.com/group/fping-users

Installation

If you want to install fping from source, proceed as follows:

  1. Run ./autogen.sh (only if you got the source from Github).
  2. Run ./configure with the correct arguments. (see: ./configure --help)
  3. Run make; make install.
  4. Make fping either setuid, or, if under Linux: sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+ep fping

If you can't run fping as root or can't use the cap_net_raw capability, you can also run fping in unprivileged mode. This works on MacOS and also on Linux, provided that your GID is included in the range defined in /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ping_group_range. This is particularly useful for running fping in rootless / unprivileged containers. The --fwmark option needs root or cap_net_admin.

Usage

Have a look at the fping(8) manual page for usage help. (fping -h will also give a minimal help output.)

Docker usage

You can use the current Docker image from the develop branch directly from GitHub.

Github Docker: ghcr.io/schweikert/fping:latest

The following example uses podman, but you can replace podman with docker if you prefer.

Load or update Docker image

podman pull ghcr.io/schweikert/fping:latest

Run fping

podman run --rm fping:latest 127.0.0.1

Credits