Device Ping does not work when using BusyBox ping binary

1

Hello together,

after switching to another base image for our GenieACS Docker image, we noticed that the ping functionality does not work anymore because the ping API (e.g. /api/ping/8.8.8.8) doesn’t return all values:

{
    "packetsTransmitted": 3,
    "packetsReceived": 3,
    "packetLoss": 0,
    "min": null,
    "avg": null,
    "max": null,
    "mdev": null
}

After some testing and looking at the relevant source code (https://github.com/genieacs/genieacs/blob/master/lib/ping.ts#L29) and testing at the CLI I noticed that the ping util from the busybox binary has other output than the standard iputils-ping linux util:

Busybox (v1.36.1):

/ # ping -w 1 -i 0.2 -c 3 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=0 ttl=63 time=14.593 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=1 ttl=63 time=15.441 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: seq=2 ttl=63 time=15.628 ms

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.593/15.220/15.628 ms

iputils-ping (iputils 20221126):

/ # ping -w 1 -i 0.2 -c 3 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=63 time=14.6 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=63 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=63 time=14.5 ms

--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 401ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 13.623/14.232/14.616/0.435 ms

Problem seems to be the last line where rtt is replaced by round-trip(?) and the mdev parameter missing This causes the RegEx to fail and therefore the output of the API call to be incomplete.

I could provide a pull request to include RegEx support for the busybox output but then the mdev parameter would still be unpopulated. Another option would be to advise users to install iputils-ping when using minimal distros or base images like alpine. Tested with node:18-alpine3.18.

Any suggestions?

1 Like
2

I’ve looked at this a bit, and the issue is actually not round-trip vs rtt. mdev not being in the BB version is the issue.

If I modify parseRegExp1 for platform linux to add a single ? it works. Here is the updated regex:

/(\d+) packets transmitted, (\d+) .*received, ([\d.]+)% .*loss[^]*= ([\d.]+)\/([\d.]+)\/([\d.]+)\/?([\d.]+)/