Re: netcfg: proposal for template change
Hi,
Justin B Rye <justin.byam.rye@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Fri, 2020-01-10 at 22:01 +0100, Holger Wansing wrote:
> >> I would like to propose a change on a template in netcfg:
> > [...]
> >> _Description: Malformed IP address
> >> The IP address you provided is malformed. It should be in the form
> >> - x.x.x.x where each 'x' is no larger than 255 (an IPv4 address), or a
> >> - sequence of blocks of hexadecimal digits separated by colons (an IPv6
> >> + x.x.x.x where each 'x' is an integer not larger than 255 (for an IPv4 address), or
> >> + xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx each 'xxxx' being a block of hexadecimal digits (for an IPv6
> >> address). Please try again.
> > [...]
> >
> > But IPv6 addresses do not have to look like that: leading zeroes in
> > each group can be omitted and a run of all-zero groups in the middle
> > can be omitted.
> >
> > And really I think the tiny proportion of users who need to enter
> > static network configuration will already know what an IP address looks
> > like.
>
> In fact it might be more likely to be helpful if it said:
>
> The value you provided is not a usable IPv4 or IPv6 address. Please
> try again; for instance when setting up an IPv4 local area network
> you might use an address such as "192.168.0.1".
>
> On the other hand if they specifically want to configure an IPv6
> address, they've probably just typed it in wrong (again).
I just see something of an inconsistency here, when comparing the IPv4
against the IPv6 variant: the IPv4 case is described more or less in
detail, while IPv6 is not.
And since IPv6 is still new to most people (power users or system admins
might be an exception here), I thought it might make sense to give more
details for the IPv6 case too.
On the long term, IPv6 will become the default for all of us, I assume...
Holger
--
Holger Wansing <hwansing@mailbox.org>
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508 3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076
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