GeoTrace




Geotrace is a geographical traceroute utility. It is heavily based on GTrace
You will need gtk 1.2 (ftp.gtk.org) and gdk-pixbuf (ftp.gnome.org). Look below for a tarball.
As of v0.0.3, it should be pretty stable (well, maybe v0.0.4).
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News:
2001-10-30: Allright, I haven't updated this page in a long time. And probably won't for a while after this. I'm way to busy this semester to work on geotrace. However, my plan is to rewrite it entirely someday (something that needs to be done badly since I wrote most of it in a few days). In the mean time, do whatever you want, and dno't check back here until a few months from now.

2001-05-09: I'll be out of town for a while (return date unknown so far) and I'm afraid I won't be able to work on geotrace until I get back. Please be patient. I will keep checking sourceforge and my e-mail for bug reports or anything else really. Have a good one.
2001-04-23: added instructions on how to use other maps.
2001-04-19: RPMs for v0.0.4 are available. Rob rocks.
2001-04-18: Release v0.0.4: added options, cmd line args, minor bug fixes
I'm also going to put some new screenshots soon. Check in a little while.
**** later: some screenshots of v0.0.4 are up. scroll down.
2001-04-15: RPMs are now available. Go to the project page. Thanks Rob.
Also, the next version should be coming soon. See below for what's expected.
2001-03-31: Release v0.0.3: major bug fixes. some new features.
2001-03-28: Release v0.0.2: mainly bug fixes
2001-03-27: Initial release of GeoTrace: v0.0.1
**** later: fixed broken tarball. sorry.

Download:
Latest version: 0.0.4 Changelog  source  i386 RPM  PPC RPM  source RPM 
Previous versions
Next Version: v0.0.5: no planned release date yet
- keep trace when changing maps (requires some rewrite of the code)
- distance calculation and location checker (distance/RTT check)
- add movie style trace (option.slow drawing. totally unrealistic :) see 007: Goldeneye and many other bad movies. I don't know if I actually want to do that one.
- more stuff (to be decided)

Using other maps:
In order to be able to use a new map with geotrace, you only need to know one thing: the longitude/latitude of the top left and bottom right corners. Most maps you will find will be centered on 0,0 (about 5 degs south of Ghana and 10 degs west of Gabon. for those of you who don't know, it's in Africa.). So, let's do it step by step:
1) Find a map. there are plenty on the web. Nasa's a good place to find them (it is a mess though). Or grab one of the few maps at a site with maps for XGlobe and XPlanet.
The image must be in a format understood by gdk-pixbuf (most images you'll find will be jpeg or gif which work).
2) Go to the maps/ directory in geotrace. Put the map in there and open up maps.properties
3) on the second line, you'll see MAPS:World50.gif, World100.gif etc... That's a list of all the maps. Add the name of your recently downloaded map on that line.
4) now, you need to tell geotrace what the coordinates are. Add a line to the file that looks as follows:
filename:BOUNDARY=lon1,lat1,lon2,lat2
filename: case sensitive, map has to be in the maps/ folder
lon1 and lat1: longitude and latitude of the top left corner
lon2 and lat2: longitude and latitude of the bottom right corner
As I said earlier, for most maps you'll find, you'll get -180,90,180,-90 which means that the map is centered on 0,0. However, the two world maps (World100 and World50) in geotrace are centered on 10W,0
You might notice that the three maps of the US have another line associated with them. That's the alber projection. You probably won't have to deal with that.
4) Run geotrace, select your map from the drop-down and enjoy.

Known bugs/limitations:
- Some hops may have extravagant locations, but for once, it's not my fault. The netgeo server does not have fully updated records. So my advice is, just live with it

Of course, any feedback, suggestions, bug reports are greatly appreciated. Use the Project Page on sourceforge or e-mail: absolut250@users.sourceforge.net Please use sourceforge for bugs so that other people can profit from it.

Screenshots:







Last Modified: Wednesday, May 9th 2001. 9:26 EST