I just had the following error while trying to start Smokeping on one of my newly installed machines:

ERROR: fping (‘/usr/bin/fping -C 1 localhost’) could not be run: localhost address not found

After digging around somewhat (this worked fine when run on the commandline) turns out my /etc/hosts was chmodded 700 instead of 744. Weird, but this meant only root could resolve it. What I don’t understand is why this did not work – my resolvers also return 127.0.0.1 for the “localhost” query.

Anyway, if you get this error, check if the smokeping user can resolve localhost too 😉

As Kris would say, it was some sort of DNS problem… 😉

Incoming Links (via Technorati):
Nothing Reported