Fixing Mac OS X 10.6’s ping command (aka, removing Request timeout for icmp_seq #)

If you are like me, and annoyed that OS X 10.6’s ping command displays the following text when it cannot reach a host:

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2

Then you’ll be happy for the fix. You can either download the source code to the ping command from Apple and edit it yourself, or you can download my pre-compiled copy.

If you choose to edit it yourself, you’ll want to comment out lines 977 and 978 so they look like this:

// if (!(options & F_QUIET))
// printf("Request timeout for icmp_seq %ld\n", ntransmitted - 2);

Then just type ‘gcc ping.c’ and you’ll end up with a file called a.out, which you can use to replace /sbin/ping, or put in your local ~/bin directory if you’ve got one.